Artwork
Archiving Care
30 October–2 November 2019
George Paton Gallery // Melbourne
Feminist philosopher Virginia Held (2006) argues that the central focus of care “is on the compelling moral salience of attending to and meeting the needs of the particular others for whom we take responsibility.” Joan Tronto writes of the four ethical elements of care as “attentive, responsible, responsive, and iterative.” Alongside these ideas, the artists take heed of the framework developed by The Information Maintainers in Information Maintenance as a Practice of Care, who argue “Power inheres in the acts of identifying, classifying, and ordering information. People who are privileged to define information of importance and dictate how it is organized and shared have disproportionate influence on the shape and dynamics of society.”
Archiving Care is a participatory, process-based sculptural work led by artists Claire Field and Caroline Phillips. In this work, participants are invited to consider what they have recently actively cared for and participate in building a growing archive of keepsakes, that materialises an archive of care. Archiving Care is an aesthetic and process-based response to these ideas, that connects the artists’ interests and practices of archiving the stories and histories of women’s art—Claire through FavourEconomy and Caroline through the Women’s Art Register (WAR)—and amplifies the practice of archiving as a practice of care.
EXHIBITIONS
Southwest Contemporary // Adelaide
George Paton Gallery // Melbourne, part of the Care Symposium Exhibition”
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
2019 symposium 'CARE: Transforming values through art, ethics and feminism'