Unearthed

100% wool felt, cotton and linen thread. 26.4. ’Eileen's rock’? 19.14. ‘Eileen's friend's bit 'o rock’? 26.2. ‘Varena’s polished flint axehead’? 19.13. ‘Varena Pegg found on garden path, and hasn't been the same since!’ ‘Unearthed’ are a collection of wool felt pockets, tailor made to hold ancient objects. The illustrations from the archaeological dig are used to label the artefact within; allowing these items to stay safely protected in their archival container. The objects, once unearthed, are once again buried and unseen within the archive. The titles of these works are taken from the unexpected annotations in the margins of the field notes; they suggest the stories of the artefacts’ unearthing. These new works have been developed through research into archeological finds and drawings from Winchester, housed in the Hampshire Cultural Trust’s archives. ‘Unearthed’ continues Vanessa Rolf’s exploration of the values and hierarchies of objects, the stories we use them to tell and the narratives of the archives themselves. She uses the ordering principles and the visual language of the collections to reflect on the lived experiences of our relationships to objects in the Anthropocene.