© The Archive Hotel: Edition Four, front cover.
In 2020, my work was selected for the fourth edition of The Archive Hotel, an Belgian autonomous platform for artistic research which publishes material dedicated to the artist's archive, embracing homage and conflict.
The Archive Hotel is an alternative educational project that invites artists to give an insight into their work process. The time and space they are taking between the inspiration and the finished artwork. Or in other words their experience in the studio.
© The Archive Hotel & Sid White-Jones, artists feature.
More specifically The Archive Hotel wants to focus on how an artist deals with their image collection. They wish to inspire young artists and offer an understanding to those who bear a love for images.
Each publication debates the idea of creating images as a reaction, an answer, a consequence or product of another image.
The fourth edition featured work by Rachel Cusk, Angyvir Padilla, Bettie Boersma, Hans Demeulenaere, Joelle Dubois, Levi Lanser, Patrick Ceyssens, Pauline Rheims, Stein Bekaert and myself.
© The Archive Hotel: Edition Four, contents page.
© The Archive Hotel: Edition Four, inside spreads.
My submitted work was created using imagery from my own family archive. I selected pieces of text and image and overlaid them with found objects, all from parts of my project ‘Dearest Malcolm and Carol’ (2016) which explores the coincidences of family linearity through the archive. However, within my work for The Archive Hotel I considered new and different ways to presentation these pieces, separate from that of my project work.
The four- book instillation encompasses multiple variations of the photographical form all of which allow the ageing process to be experienced through sight and touch. Working with various sentimental items, mostly photographs and letters that have been around for up to 90 years.
The four photobooks look at the ways in which memories are stored within objects. The work depicts the cycle of a family, an interweaving narrative that is equal parts comforting and unsettling.
More from these photobooks can be found on my website here.
For more The Archive Hotel visit -
IG: @thearchivehotel
Special Thanks -
To Ash Bowland, Founder of The Archive Hotel.