Susan Hiller on her work From the Freud Museum

In this her text 'Working Through Objects' from 1994 Susan Hiller reflects on working with archival objects From the Freud Museum.

Reflections on the archive by Sue Breakell

"Archives are more prominent than ever, not only in art practice and theoretical discourse but also in popular culture. An archive is now understood to mean anything that is longer current but that has been retained. This paper considers how archival practice can be integrated further within current discourses of art history, theory and practice, at a time when the concept of the archive is at both more widely known and less fixed in its meaning." Continue reading Sue Breakell's reflections on  negotiating the archive in this piece published on the Tate website.

Song Dong: Waste Not

From the wikipedia page about this artwork

Waste Not is an exhibit by Chinese artist Song Dong that displays over 10,000 domestic objects formerly owned by his late mother, who refused to throw anything away if she could possibly reuse it. She had suffered poverty during China's turmoils in the 1950s and 1960s and had acquired a habit of thrift and re-use that led her to store domestic objects of all kinds in her tiny house in Beijing. After the death of her husband in 2002, her desire to hoard items became an obsession that began to affect her standard of living. Song and his sister managed to alleviate it by persuading her to let him use her possessions as an art installation, reflecting her life and the modern history of China as experienced by one family.

The careful categorisation, organisation and spatial arrangement of the objects hoarded by his mother turn these everyday items into an impressive archive that reflects the social and cultural issues alluded to above.

Sean O'Connell

For his exhibition suburban spirits in 2017 Sean O'Connell worked with objects that were highly significant to his deceased grandparents. His careful selection of these objects, the representations that he made of them, and the way that they were ordered in both the exhibition and the catalogue, gave these objects their archival quality.

These images are pages taken directly from the catalogue. The text for each image has been copied here. 

Above (left), my grandfather’s headband loupe that he wore constantly when engraving, peering into the minutiae of his work. Opposite (right), the loupe imaged by x-ray photography, using Industrex T200 radiographic film.

Above (left), a milling tool made by my grandfather during his tool-making apprenticeship in Germany. Opposite (right), the cutting head of the tool imaged by 60kV DC spark discharge over Arista orthographic film.

Above (left), my grandmother and myself, dressed to please, 1979. Opposite (right), my grandmother’s kitchen scissors, always at the ready to cut, imaged through 35kV DC spark discharge over Ilford Ortho Plus orthographic film.

Above (left), my grandmother’s kitchen scales, used daily, and repaired constantly with glue and sticky tape. Opposite (right), the mechanism of the kitchen scales imaged through x-ray photography using Industrex T200 radiographic film.