Curated by Holly Rose O'Brien

The Collection Is Not Closed

Resonance and Remnants Omid Asadi 2023 ph credit J Lister

Considering collections as spaces for conversation, I would like to look at ways artists enter into dialogue with existing collections, archives and historic spaces.

Rather than treating collections as fixed or complete, I’m interested in how artist interventions can highlight collections as living material that can be reinterpreted, rearranged, questioned and brought into conversation with the present.

Featuring artworks by: Zinzi Minott, Rebecca Chesney, Ruth Levene & Ian Nesbitt, Omid Asadi, Jonathan Gabb, Angela Chalmers, Jay Rechsteiner, Emma Bolland, Carole McCourt, Letty McHugh.

Read more about these artists in the Artist Gallery and get to know featured members & the curator by joining the conversation in the Axis Community.

The Collection Is Not Closed by Holly Rose O’Brien

In Quinn Latimer’s collected writing Like a Woman, which moves between notes on literature, theory, personal history and recollection, she writes: “Walls would not dry – not room, not mind. History would not dry. Wet – what grew in it.” (1) Latimer’s words, and particularly this image of history as something that does not dry, have stayed with me and informed my practice.

Working in David Parr House, a historic house with a collection, you are often confronted with the idea of the house as a time capsule. Yet the house, the collection and its history exist in the present and its life continues. David Parr painted the walls of his home with oil paint, which would have taken days to dry. More than a century later, the building still breathes. The conservation of the house involves maintaining stable humidity, managing pests and monitoring visitors. People continue to move through it, breathe within it and add to its story. The walls are still not dry.

Wetness becomes a way of thinking about history as something that is not fixed or finished but remains in contact with the present. We come into contact with history through the places we inhabit, the objects we handle and the traces we find. It can seep into the present in ways that are material, partial and sometimes difficult to see.

Historian Arlette Farge notes how the archive is often likened to ‘a sea of documents’ with ‘unpredictable currents’, describing how those who work in archives often speak of diving, immersion and even drowning: having ‘a rendez-vous with the sea’. (2) The archive is not simply something to look through but somewhere to enter.

This selection brings together artists who, in different ways, dive into the histories they are engaging with. Their work responds to historic houses, collections, archives, inherited materials and the traces left behind. Some begin with found objects or fragments, others with absence or decay. Each artist enters into something that already exists, bringing their own perspective, materials and questions to it.

(1) Latimer, Quinn. ‘Like a Woman’, (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2017).

(2) Farge, Arlette. Le goût de l’archive, (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1989).

Minott’s Fi Dem brings together fragmented archival footage, family material, sound and images connected to Black British and diasporic histories. Histories of enslavement and the Windrush generation sit alongside personal archives, connecting wider histories with lived experience.

Water recurs throughout the work, connecting the movement of people across the Atlantic with histories of migration and displacement. The archive is fragmented rather than complete, with voices, images and memories appearing alongside one another.

Fi Dem VII: Many Mikl Mek ah Mukl

By Zinzi Minott | 2023

Chesney’s Solace begins with marks that are easy to overlook. Found on the walls, behind beds and around fireplaces at Astley Hall, these marks were scratched into the building and burned with a candle as a way to protect against evil or bad luck.

Chesney took rubbings of these traces and reproduced them on bed drapes. Something easily missed within the building is brought into view and placed within a space associated with shelter and intimacy.

Solace

By Rebecca Chesney | 2022

A Measure of Care starts with an 1800s bird ledger held in the Harris Museum archive. Levene and Nesbitt took the ledger back into the landscape where it was made, working with farmers, birders, residents, ornithologists, conservationists and historians.

The work brings together the landscape recorded by a Victorian landowner with how it is understood and cared for today. The archive becomes something to return to and use rather than something that simply sits on a shelf.

A Measure of Care

By Ruth Levene & Ian Nesbitt | 2025

Built in situ from reclaimed bricks from demolished houses, personal objects and dandelion seeds, Resonance and Remnants is made from materials connected to places that no longer exist.

The work comes from Asadi’s experiences of revisiting the sites of family homes destroyed by war or development. The houses are no longer there but are present through the materials and objects that remain.

Resonance and Remnants

By Omid Asadi | 2023

Gabb’s Wonder and War in Heaven, made for Snape Chapel in 2019, responds to Antonio Verrio’s fresco, which has faded and decayed over time.

Using brightly coloured knotted cords, Gabb creates a new canopy inspired by the colours of the original. The cords are pulled apart to form a web-like structure with openings through which the remains of the fresco can still be seen.

Wonder and War in Heaven

By Jonathan Gabb | 2019

Chalmers’ Luminary begins with an absence. Research into St Martin-on-the-Hill in Scarborough revealed the story of a woman who helped fund the construction of a new church yet whose presence had gradually disappeared from its history.

With no known photograph of her, Chalmers creates a portrait inspired by Victorian carte de visite photography. The portrait gives form to someone whose image and story have largely been lost.

Luminary: Portrait of a Surgeon’s Daughter

By Angela Chalmers | 2024

After his father’s death, Rechsteiner compiles his personal possessions into an evolving archive or wunderkammer. Objects are continually rearranged, added, removed and reconsidered.

Rather than a finished record of a life, the archive changes as Rechsteiner returns to the objects and memories of his father. Each arrangement becomes another way of remembering him.

Archive of a Thousand Lives

By Jay Rechsteiner | 2015

Developed through a residency at Wath Hall, a Georgian house described as haunted, Bolland’s We are the Weights of the Moon brings together found furniture, minerals and metals.

The objects are balanced and suspended in strange arrangements. They seem to hover in the space, as though they have been placed or held there by an unseen hand.

We are the Weights of the Moon

By Emma Bolland | 2026

McCourt’s Feelings of Kindly Reverence responds to wall paintings uncovered during restoration at Lindisfarne Castle. Taking the form of a wallpaper sample book, the work looks at craftsmanship, restoration and the ways patterns and techniques are carried forward.

Rather than recreating a fixed original, the work reflects on restoration as an ongoing process of looking, making and repair. Its repeated patterns echo the care involved in maintaining historic places.

Feelings of Kindly Reverence

By Carole McCourt | 2018

Walking through Oslo, McHugh imagines the people who lived there before her, drawing attention to the layers of history beneath the city as it is experienced today.

The streets, buildings and ground we move through have all held other lives. The work asks us to notice these histories within the everyday.

You Are Standing in History

By Letty McHugh | 2020

About the Curator - Holly Rose O’Brien

Holly Rose O’Brien is an arts producer and curator delivering exhibitions, public programmes and digital projects independently and within museums and arts organisations. Her work brings contemporary artists into conversation with collections, archives and museums, creating new ways for audiences to encounter histories and heritage. She is currently Programme and Marketing Manager at David Parr House, where she manages a programme of exhibitions, talks and workshops alongside audience development, marketing and digital strategy. She is also undertaking the Associateship of the Museums Association (AMA).

What interests me most at the moment is the relationship between an artist’s work and the context in which it is presented. I’m particularly interested in how curatorial ideas can create space for complexity, contradiction and voices or histories that are less visible, and how research can open up new ways of understanding a work.