Jordan McCarthy,

Artist, Collector and Primary School Teacher

Thinking through things

Isn’t it curious that we can look to simple objects to tell us about the past, nature, weather, societal values, culture and even ourselves or others? How some objects can seemingly hold high value and provoke visceral, sensory, emotional and creative responses, yet others are overlooked and designated as obsolete, insignificant or uninspiring?

I collect found, strange or old-fashioned objects for my art practice and I often utilize them in my teaching with year 1 students to build speaking and listening, vocabulary, questioning, and inference making skills. Inspired by Daniel Miller’s The Comfort of Things, Ruth Hogan’s The Keeper of Lost Things, and artists such as Mark Dion and Joseph Cornell, my practice-based research has been primarily concerned with attempting to communicate narratives through humble objects. This installation incorporates objects from my own and others’ collections, some of which have inspired fictional narratives in written and oral form.

By recontextualizing everyday objects, their mysterious qualities can be enhanced.