The idea of the memory vessels is a form of archiving of intangible experiences, and so I carried out research in order to figure out what form that could take. I researched vessels that were made to age their contents, as well as vessels that were made to contain intangible forms, such as souls. I had in mind something like canopic jars, so I also visited the ancient Egyptian section at Leicester Museum to view the ceramics that were on display. I did see some canopic jars, however I was inspired by the very simple forms and earthy aesthetic of some of the other ancient Egyptian vessels designed for storage of goods, and I felt that something ancient-looking would be fitting for an object that might be conceivably found in a cave.
I already had in mind that I wanted the vessels to be sealed, in effort to keep the memories inside of them, and I wanted to hang at least some of them in order to emphasise the fragility of memory. I saw a hanging pot at Leicester Museum and I enjoyed it's juxtaposition between being a solid form with weight, and that it appeared to be floating. I felt that it was most effective in it's simplicity. For my own vessels, I decided that I would keep the forms simple, perhaps referencing the shapes of some of the Egyptian, Greek and Roman ones that I found during my research. I also decided to keep to a monochrome colour scheme in reference to the pots that I had seen, but also so that they tie in with the cave paintings and drawings I have been making.
Although my work will be displayed as part of a group exhibition, I still wanted to consider how my pieces would work together as a whole. I wanted to create a kind of narrative of a journey into a cave, with each piece adding to that experience. I'm planning to display some large paintings and drawings of cave interiors. Amongst these, the memory vessels would be objects that had perhaps been cached in a cave, in the same way that we bury our memories deep within ourselves.
I want to invite the viewer to get a glimpse of my personal memories, and so I would like it to be a slow, contemplative and individual experience, where they can slowly discover the text written on the vessels. For this reason, I would like to install them in a manner where the viewer could walk freely around them in order to view them at different angles and read the text at their own pace. To give a sense of a 'core', I plan to suspend half of the vessels and place half of them on a plinth below. This would also serve to prevent people from walking beneath the suspended ceramics and mitigate any health and safety risk that would come of them colliding with them.
I created some initial test pieces in order to test out the shapes and colours that I saw during my research. I liked the shapes of the two vessels below, however I thought that I would need to add a curved lip at the top of the design where I could tie thread to use to suspend the pots. I also wanted the colour to be a darker grey or black so that there would be a clearer visual link between the vessels and my other works. I also wanted the text to be really subtle, so that the effort of reading it would feel more like a process of discovery.
