We’re delighted to invite Hull based The Aimless Archive to deliver the 26th instalment of our Bonington Vitrines programme.
Suggested Starting Points is an exhibition that builds upon a single afternoon The Aimless Archive (TAA) spent in the Bonington Gallery archives.
Each item selected to be shown will operate as an invitation for the audience to contribute to the exhibition, which can be done via open apertures cut into one of the Vitrines on display. Within this format, TAA aim to question the things that grab attention and what those things can be a catalyst for – reimagining the archive as a place for quick decisions and instinct, and not a place of exhaustion.
This exhibition will expand to include the Bonington Archive Cabinet in the form of Notes Toward Suggested Starting Points, where a collection of papers and notebooks generated by TAA will lay bare the process behind the presentation in the Vitrines.
—
The invitation to TAA to make a project with us follows an extensive (and still ongoing) period of organisation of Bonington Gallery’s own 50+ year archive. By bringing external voices into this work, we hope to analyse, question and potentially disrupt inherited processes and attitudes towards the organisation of historical materials. We hope to explore methods for how archives can be activated in ways that better match their often more subjective origins.
The Aimless Archive works across text – conversation – performance – collecting. It questions what we keep and what we get rid of by generating starting points for new and collaborative work, building archives as places for reflection and evaluation, and presenting unfinished and ongoing work. Repeatedly working in the area where artists and audiences meet, outcomes often take the form of (a book – a box – a by-product) or (a workshop – a scanned doc – a re-drafted piece of writing).
The Aimless Archive on Instagram.
Launch event
Book your free ticket to attend the launch event for this exhibition at 6 pm on Friday 17 January 2025.
