Boxers & Collections

I wanted to post a few images from the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum's collections which impacted me as I thought about the Shed - Collect - Shed exhibition and began to formulate ideas for work which would fit the show.

These first images are of boxes from the Elliott Collection. Elliott was a dentist from Tanworth-in-Arden collecting shells during the late 1800s. 3900 shells and his notebooks were donated to the museum in 1975. His 'African Collection' is particularly interesting where he stored his shells in boxes constructed partly from playing cards and partly from order cards from the Royal Mail Steam Ship 'African'. I love the creativity shown through how he used to store his treasured finds. Elliott also used many makeshift storage containers - pill boxes, match boxes and even denture boxes! 

  

Some of my work in the show and Martin Green's City Box sculptures deliberately dialogue with this collection.

A Stand-In Triumph (detail) (2014) - Lorsen Camps (assorted found objects in found Standard Triumph match boxes).

City Box Sculpture #3, Lopsided Travel (2014) - Martin Green (box made from the covers of the History of Boxing and World of Meaning, cigarette packet foil, one worn heel and one found suitcase wheel, 30 found wheel weights, collection / catalogue reference number).