I have never been fond of introductions,
The awkward beginnings of it all,
The disjointedness,
The gaps dividing what has been said,
What has been excluded,
And what has merely been forgotten.
I have never been fond of throwaway interactions,
Automated pleasantries,
Apathetic responses
You see, I am more interested in words, expressions, language,
Which come less from the head,
And more from the heart.
And so, from a place in my heart to yours, allow me to introduce you to
a place in my heart,
with the hope it shall come to hold,
a place in ours.
A ticket stub, a nail, a cigarette packet,
The object of our attention but never of our hearts.
They captivate us only for the space between each breath, each passing encounter,
perhaps only for a single touch.
They exist to us in ways that we never allow ourselves to exist to them,
For at one point in time,
One position in place,
We held them,
Touched them.
And at one point in time,
And one position in place,
We Let them go.
They exist in a world that is not their own
One designed for their existence to be defined by moments of encounter,
And moments alone.
And so, I ask,
In the moments spent within these walls,
As your fingers brush the vulnerable surface of this page,
As the moisture from your touch curls the edges,
The strength of your grip marking the delicate fibres of my skin,
Please consider,
How the surface of your skin touches mine,
And perhaps
For these moments we share together,
The duration of Our Encounter,
Allow us to penetrate beyond the tender surface of your skin,
To settle in a corner of your heart
From a place in our hearts,
Aliya Prichard-Casey + Lilian Evans
A ticket stub, a nail, a cigarette packet – a discarded object. All objects we held in our hands but not in our hearts. It is the shared attraction to such from which this exhibition came forth.
Thus, A place in my heart exists as a collaborative exhibition brought forth by Glasgow based artist, Lilian Evans, and curator, Aliya Prichard-Casey.
Embracing the context of the Pipe Factory and its history of dereliction, this project draws upon the catalyst for such: the humble rolled cigarette, and the primary reason for the downfall of claypipe production worldwide, and subsequently, the cause of the Pipe Factory’s dereliction.
This exhibition exploring the relationships we hold with our material surroundings, confronts our tendency to consume, use, and discard whilst reframing the object and its potentiality. Framed through Moments Of Encounter, this exhibition shall act as a marker of a point in time, a position in place thereby unveiling the interconnection, the traces, between all people and things.
Utilising attachment and its polar, abandonment, to centre the consumerist tendency to use and discard, this exhibition highlights the human predilection to assign face values to objects thus cementing the brevity of their existence as objects of value. This exhibition, in its repurposing of discarded materials, brings forth the materiality embedded within these objects and finds value for them as art. It is once they become works of art, that they are destroyed. The auto-destructive nature of this show touches upon the ‘after-lives’ of these objects emphasising the dynamism of materials, evolving, deteriorating, nothing fixed, nothing static, always in flux.
These objects hold a place in our hearts. Let them hold a place in yours.
