found
This page displays a selection of transcripts and images drawn from a collection of found text and photographs. All of these were found in the street and collected between about 1990 and 2025. I say ‘about’ because, while I do very occasionally still find texts, the internet has made writing on paper an increasingly rare occurrence. There are no specific criteria for collecting other than I don’t collect shopping lists. Recently I’ve been making artwork with some of these found texts.
Though the collection does cover the transitional period during which communication has moved into the digital sphere and away from the hand-written, it was never the intention of the collection to reflect on that transition. I was, and still am, more interested in the ephemeral and random nature of the texts, and the glimpses they offered into lived experiences - hence the inclusion of found photographs. That said, the increasing absence of this unmediated evidence of lives lived is a loss, and as time passes the collection has increasingly taken on an archaeological quality, which I like.
Though the collection does cover the transitional period during which communication has moved into the digital sphere and away from the hand-written, it was never the intention of the collection to reflect on that transition. I was, and still am, more interested in the ephemeral and random nature of the texts, and the glimpses they offered into lived experiences - hence the inclusion of found photographs. That said, the increasing absence of this unmediated evidence of lives lived is a loss, and as time passes the collection has increasingly taken on an archaeological quality, which I like.