No Contextual Information + Index Cards (Details)

Two series of photographs, created whilst Vlatka Horvat and Tim Etchells conducted research in the storage and archive facilities of Museums Sheffield's collections, as they developed their ACE-funded project What Can Be Seen.

In No Contextual Information, Etchells and Horvat turn their eye to the storage facilities of the Museums Sheffield collections, zooming in and photographing a selection of handwritten notes, labels and other text materials marked on boxes, post-it-notes, envelopes and pieces of scrap-paper. From simple descriptions and notes-to-self by curators, to reminders about the location or status of particular objects, to questions about their identity or history, these images record details in the daily life of the museum, showing traces of the ongoing work of the institution in looking after, keeping track of and studying the items in their care. Taken out of context, these labels and text fragments – announcing the presence of ‘mystery objects’ or boxes ‘waiting for lid’ – take on a poetical, at times comical, aspect, as well as giving a glimpse of the daily processes that go on behind the scenes in the museum store and archives.

For Card Index (Details), Etchells and Horvat sifted the vast, carefully organised card index of the museum’s collections to find a handful of small anomalies, mysteries and unfinished stories. From objects lost and then re-located in a major audit some 50 years ago, to catalogue cards for objects about which little is known, and records of items that were destroyed or rejected from the collection, the artists were drawn to the incomplete stories of objects, to gaps and absences of data and to that which is unknown or uncertain in the midst of a methodical, thorough system of organisation and record keeping.

• http://www.vlatkahorvat.com/portfolios/n...
• http://www.vlatkahorvat.com/portfolios/c...
• http://timetchells.com/projects/no-conte...
• http://timetchells.com/projects/card-ind...