Insight teacher Rob Verrill: Recent work
Much of my work involves found objects as I am an inveterate collector of discarded stuff I find on the streets in the normal course of life. The “stuff” I collect has to attract me or “speak” to me in some way though when I start collecting a particular item – such as found shopping lists, polystyrene fish boxes, gloves or broken pieces of vehicle suspension systems – I usually have no idea why they interest me or what I might do with them. Then suddenly it clicks.
I’ve collected discarded shopping lists for a long time, I think because they give intriguing insights into anonymous, unknown lives – almost mini biographies. Then very recently I’ve realised that they reference the currently very fraught and fractious issue of shopping during the virus emergency. I am presently trying to link them more directly to our current “lockdown” by carrying a folded, found list, with a piece of coloured chalk wrapped inside, inside one of my shoes as I take an occasional short walk to a local shop.
The chalk is activated to “draw” on the paper lists by my walking motion. This effectively records the list’s return journey to the shops. I intend to continue this ritual during the current emergency but don’t yet know if and how I might show the work. The found cork notice-board is one possibility.
Rob Verrill
26-03-20
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