Submissions are sought for an Open Exhibition Send us a visual interpretation of the term ‘Object Abuse’   September 21st to December 15th 2013, at Spinach: a central London space.   A Private View shall take place on the 12th Dec 2013. Contributions will be accepted until the day before the private view.  All artwork […]

Submissions are sought for an Open Exhibition Send us a visual interpretation of the term ‘Object Abuse’   All artwork will be exhibited and artists credited.   September 21st to December 15th 2013, at Spinach: a central London space.   A Private View shall take place on the 12th Dec 2013. Contributions will be accepted […]

  Tom Watson has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Title: Soft Touch (Life jacket & Thread, Height 20x Width 25x Depth 2cm, 2012) “I emulated the required thickness of leather by wrapping polyurethane foam in the polyester outer, and then following exactly the craft of master whip maker Ron Edwards,  to produce […]

  Tom Watson has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Title: Untitled (Padded chair & fixings, 1.5x1x2m, 2010) “I dismantled & reconstituted a chair with the same tool of its original construction. The piece offered the fantasy scenario of lighting the polyurethane foam on the floor behind, sitting facing backwards placing your head […]

Nick Pearson has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Title: Japanese Temple Visiting an ancient temple near Tokyo with a Japanese friend (who was proudly reciting the ancient credentials of the several hundred years-old wooden building she was showing us) I noticed a couple of carpenters working on one of the internal supporting posts. […]

Alison Carlier has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, […]

Michelle Atherton has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Title: Untitled – 2010 Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is […]

Torsten Lauschmann has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. This Photograph shows a Wabag warrior in Papua New Guinea wearing a Kellogg’s tin for decoration. Photograph by Michael Leahy  (around 1934) National Library of Australia. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look […]

Ben Rivers has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, […]

  To anthropomorphize objects is perhaps the greatest abuse that we can inflict on the object world. We like to imagine objects staring back at us and even, on occasion, position objects so that they appear to be watching us (see Jaspar’s image in the Visual Interpretations section).  This delusional fantasy is perhaps best challenged […]

Jaspar Joseph Lester has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not […]

Lea Torp Nielsen has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, […]

Hannah Shaw has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. This image is the first of a series. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the […]

Simon Barker & Nayan Kulkarni (still from multi-channel video), 2012 (found gateway embellishments, Medway, Kent)   Simon Barker and Nayan Kulkarni have offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious […]

Marie von Heyl has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not […]

Richard Sides has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, where does […]

Title: Untitled (studio 1), 2012, pencil & water colour on paper, 30.5 x 22cm Natalie Finnemore has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who […]

’They (the Moderns) do have a fetish, the strangest one of all: they deny to the objects they fabricate the autonomy they have given them. They pretend they are not surpassed, outstripped by events. They want to keep their mastery, and they find its source within the human subject, the origin of action’.  (Bruno Latour, […]

Tom: I’m Tom. Jerry: I’m Jerry. Both: (gasp) You talk! — Tom and Jerry: The Movie Through observing the De Lacey family, the monster has become educated and self-aware. It had also discovered a lost satchel of books and learned to read. — Frankenstein by Mary Shelley “Beep, Beep, Beep!” the microwave signalled the popcorn […]

Ben Connell has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, where […]

Title: Hands Ruth Herbert has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, […]

Eugene Nyee Macki has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, where […]

‘Punched Pointy Hat’   Cerlin Karunaratne has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and […]

Lindsey Mendick has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, where does […]

‘Dumb Fixity’ ‘Listening Series’ McCormack+Gent has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not […]

Keith Arnatt’s photograph has been adopted, as a speculative interpretation’ of Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, […]

Galen Riley has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, where does […]

‘MacAir Table Wedge’ 2012 ‘G5 Coffee Table for Smokers’ Brighton 2012   Prof. Dale Russell has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is […]

‘No Climbing’ ‘Oh Dear’   Harriet Davies has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is […]

‘Smudge Tool 5’ ‘Smudge Tool 13’   Rebecca Stewart has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question […]

‘3rd February’ ‘1st May’   Lucy’s contribution is from a year-long project – 1 x Polaroid. In 2008 Polaroid announced that its instant film was to be discontinued. On January 1st 2009, I decided to take a single Polaroid for the next 365 days. My aim was simple: to make an image every day, to […]

‘Apophyllite VI’, 2011, Acrylic on canvas with apophyllite crystal, 51x50cm ‘Triangle Charging Station’, 2012, acrylic on canvas (with chair), 47x40cm ‘Magnetite Effect’, plinth, 40,000-year-old Canyon Diablo Meteorite from Arizona, USA and compass, 2012 ‘SiO2’, 2012, acrylic on canvas with clear quartz, 45x70cm ‘S3’, 2012, acrylic on canvas with sulphur crystal, 150x150cm ‘Desert Rose’, 2011, acrylic […]

Pheobe Wild has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, where […]

‘Reformed Bat’   Jim Howieson has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not […]

Richard Taylor has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, where […]

Squeege   Gary Simmonds has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, […]

I do think about objects quite a lot.   I wonder if it is ok to keep making them and I think I expect too much of them. I try not to, and allow them to be but sometimes it is hard. Sometimes as with people you are aware of what they could do but […]

Title: ma poufiasse. deer’s head Sharon Kivland has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive […]

Andy Welland has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, where […]

Dave Green has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, where […]

Amy Davies has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, where […]

Robyn Leroy Evans has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, where […]

Fiona is Senior Lecturer in Museum Studies in the School of Arts at Birkbeck, University of London. With Raiford Guins she is editor of The Object Reader (2009), and her research on audiences, museums, and the senses culminated in Art, Museums and Touch (Manchester University Press, 2010). She has just begun a new book entitled […]

Gabriel is an Irish-Nigerian Londoner, a writer and broadcaster. His radio play The Long, Hot Summer of ’76 won the Richard Imison Award; his recently completed novel Vauxhall won the Tibor Jones Pageturner Prize at the London Book Fair. He was AHRC Creative Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Judith E. Wilson Fellow at Cambridge […]

Dale is an internationally renowned design practitioner, a futurist and academic. She advocates innovative design through the synthesis of foresight, research, and practice to initiate people-centred design. introducing narrative insight and understandings as we shape our future, her creative and strategic guidance inspires visionary design cultures and projects in design and technology teams across a […]

Arcimboldo Mug has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, where does […]

Title: Mixed Up Things   Ruth Wilde has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is […]

When we stop talking about the object, does it disappear? Perhaps this is the moment when the object itself comes into existence; when we are taken out of the equation. And what for imagination? Perhaps the object has one. But what is ‘imagination’, other than a human word for something that humans experience themselves. This […]

“_____________________________” The more they don’t speak the more we want to hear them. The more we yearn to know what they are saying behind our backs. This is a strategy, this dumbness. This is a considered non-participation in human chit-chat. But are they bugging us, tracing and tracking us? Sending information about us elsewhere? This […]

Julie Westerman has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, where does […]

What have the chairs been saying as we have sat here sharing words of the possibility that humans will always speak in the place of objects? Like the ventriloquist throws words into the mouth of his dummy, can this be a metaphor for our everyday complacency for doing the same to the objects alongside us? […]

And, What Is The Relationship Between Idea and Object. In particular, a discussion concerning the immaterial object of labour. Those who become object in public when doing mundane activities such as wiping tables, cleaning bollards, are becoming invisible. Is this invisibility where they want to be? My body is an object, if I say it […]

Objects free you, objects tie you down: which do you believe? Your new shoes are on the table, the ladder is being walked underneath and that horseshoe is hanging the wrong way round. It’s all in the mind and in our cultures, yet it pushes our behaviour in peculiar directions. Objects are activated by narratives […]

Exploring what constitutes atmosphere and how this unseen force emanates. Don’t you think there are spaces that already hold their own energy? Such as the UFO museum in New Mexico or the Museum of Witchcraft in Cornwall. You have to be there to feel it. You can’t feel it through the technology of the computer […]

Nostalgic objects, objects that make you go “ahh”, objects that you can’t explain why but you succumb to their triviality, except simply…because. A PEZ dispenser. Grand Designs. A snow globe, the perfect trivial object. Trivial makes everything important. The fun-factor, the entertainment, the enjoyment, the non-importance we pull from these trivial things, to what impact […]

Before we are able to enter language, objects bring us into contact with the world beyond our mother’s body. We use the same apparatus again to deal with a loss; we attach ourselves to their objects. But how can we choose what to keep and what to throw away? This is hard. This is why so […]

How can it be that we find a human emotion with an object? Is this an energy inherent in the being of the object, or is it always going to be something we bring to it, that we place onto it? It is impossible to say, impossible to know, impossible to even compare the subjective […]

“Objects are the clasps on the pockets of space” said Malcolm de Chazal. What do the lines between objects look like; can they be tied together with string or would that tie them down? In the process of mapping we erase what is there. Are objects what they are because of their connections? Hosted by Galen […]

“Does an object have to exist in space or, if I talk about a tree that I saw (it was summertime, it was full in bloom) is that an object?” This discussion discusses the intangible object, the object of language. Is this an object? Language is human, so how can this be of the object itself? Maybe our language is […]

Don’t let the truth get in the way of a great story. Imagined objects are snuffed out when they are realised by someone else in the film of the book. What is this dissatisfaction? We must hold pictures of objects in our minds akin to characters, and this failure to represent our own narratives means […]

Is everything now so conceptual that we are forgetting what it feels to actually make something? David Hockney offers a relief to view his output in which there is more concern for making than meaning. And what of skills; they have had to reshape themselves as demand is for brands over high quality craftsmanship. We […]

Unexplained human emotions drive you to gather, collect and care for multiple things. Or you despise objects cluttering and covering and invading your space. Or you gather and disperse in fluctuations of ownership. What does this trait say about you? What do these interactions reveal of your understanding of objects, or is it something deeper, […]

The boundaries are not so solid. Categories such as ‘word’ and ‘picture’ apply to…what exactly?  Where is meaning: emotional response or literal definition? Somewhere in the middle. Could you draw the meaning of an unknown word intuitively? And how is it that English cows say “Moo”, yet French cows say “Maa”? This is a conversation […]

London vs Seoul. The cuteness of Gilbert + George; have you ever seen them dining in Dalston? This discussion attempts to move a cup with telekineses. And covers pigs, pigheads, pyschosis, truth and literal meaning. Are objects in urban environments extensions of our bodies? Perhaps we are mediated by objects through our relations with them. We continue to misunderstand […]

Is painting a noun or a verb; is painting an object or something that artists do? Alternatively, can painting be an understanding, a knowledge or an experience happening beyond either of these; could painting be a conversation about a painting? And is it something intrinsically artistic, concerned with the nature of being an artist, or is […]

Robin Close has offered a ‘visual interpretation’ of the term: Object abuse. Each one of these visual interpretations adds insight and depth to what exactly Object Abuse might look like. This question is by no means obvious when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active, where […]

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