The Lost Plots

​My Nan cut stuff out of the newspaper. She clipped out things that caught her fancy using a pair of gold-handled scissors shaped like a bird, a Kiwi I think. Nan mostly cut out the whole article, although sometimes she just cut out the image. Nan rarely just cut out the words. I never asked Nan about these clippings. Precise newspaper cutting was just something Nan did. In the last decade of her life Nan cut the paper up in rhythm to the alzheimers that slowly changed her brain. Snip. Cut. Remember. Forget. The clippings from this time present a strange and intimate record of her daily life. After Nan died no one knew what to do with the set of chocolate boxes she had methodically refilled with print. I stepped in when I feared they were to be recycled. The clippings moved with me from house to house. I read them. I packed them back up. I reread them. I packed them back up. I photographed them. I counted them. I ordered them. I mixed them up. I tried to make sense of them. I failed. I lost Nan’s plot.
 
A small set of Nan’s clippings feature in my upcoming solo exhibition Spells for Lost Things. The exhibition draws on three collections of objects that passed through the hands of three different women, before finding their way to me.
 
The exhibition opens at Western Plains Cultural Centre on Saturday 21 April 2018 at 2pm. Find further details here - https://www.facebook.com/events/363396024144379/