The Value of a Reject

Normally, pieces that I don’t like end up smashed or in a box or forgotten about.
Instead of smashing this piece, I started drawing on it. Just scribbles. Pencil marks.

Because it was already a reject, there was a strange freedom in it. It didn't matter if I made it worse. It had already failed in my eyes.

That got me thinking.

A lot of my work is about value. Why some things are treasured and others overlooked. Why certain places become sacred. Why some objects end up in museum cases while others disappear.

I'm interested in artefacts, sacred sites and overlooked fragments and materials. Dirt included. Things that have accumulated meaning over time. Often we don't really know what they were for. We tell stories about them. We assign value to them. We place them within systems of importance.

Recently I made a piece for the NSA show at Tremenheere, Eye of the Lens, using finished works, unfinished works and works in progress. I arranged them in a quadrant, referencing the way archaeologists and ecologists use grids to observe and record what they find. The act of looking becomes important. The framing becomes important.

Scribbling on this piece today, I realised something slightly uncomfortable.

I spend a lot of my time working with community groups. Many people I work with believe they are not creative and don’t value what they do. Part of my role, which I love, is helping people see their work differently. To notice strengths. To find possibilities. To see their work in a different light.
I am very good at extending that generosity to other people's work but clearly less so to my own.

In my studio there are several boxes filled with ceramic fragments. Pieces I have broken. Abandoned. Pieces that didn't meet my expectations.
I even turn some of them back into tiny fragments and powder, which often find their way back into the work.

So now I’m wondering if these rejected objects deserve the same attention I give to the overlooked things that appear elsewhere in my practice.
Not because I need to convince myself that they are good. But because they bring me back to questions I've been asking for years about how value is assigned.

Who decides when an object has failed?
What criteria are being applied?
What happens when those criteria change?

Earlier this year I was also part of All Utopias at Newlyn Art Gallery with Anna Harris and Bridgette Ashton. The exhibition explored our shared interest in systems of classification, hierarchy and the ways we organise and make sense of the world. Inspired by Georges Perec's essay Think/Classify, it asked how we think when we seek to classify.

Every day I make decisions about what is worth keeping. What is worth pursuing. What is successful. What is not.

Perhaps these pieces are not failures. I guess I could see them as records of decisions, disappointments and judgement.

I'm leaving this one in one piece, it might lead to other work. Or not.

I'm cringing slightly as I post a photo of it.