This body of work is created from salvaged slides of 1960s failed testing products and documentation of abandoned items from the basement of one of Manchester’s old Co-op buildings, Federation House.
As part of the Castlefield Gallery’s New Art Spaces initiative the building was able to host a vast number of artist studios and project/ gallery spaces, bringing the once vacant space back to life. Unfortunately last year the space was sold on, and now it remains empty waiting, one again, to be re-animated by the next potential sector. The work acts as homage to production past and present. A representation of chains of activity now forgotten for this building, from the photographer who was responsible for collating and documented a series of failed products who would never make it to market, to myself as an photographer re-appropriating this imagery as a celebration of another photographer’s past.
The slides were taken from the basement upon hearing of our vacation, and again it was this sense of urgency which drove me to save something of its past.
The work tries to capture our relationship to space, and our labour within it, and is often created at the point of risk or potential loss. A selection of the work was showcased at Rogue artist open studios, October 2016.
