With our world in such a state of delicate balance, and the way that history repeats itself and civilizations rise and fall, I imagine that our population could become significantly smaller and much more primitive due to some sort of apocalyptic event. What would this population of the future make of and from the objects that are contemporary to us today? Would everyday objects take on a magical significance?
I have been lucky enough, over the last couple of weeks to have had the opportunity to go to a seminar held by the amazing artist Simon Callery who works with commercial archaeologists at the time a landscape changes in order to see how it has changed. Currently working on the Thames Gateway Project there is an engagement with the changing landscape of the Thames Gateway, an area of development. There is a tangible materiality and physical quality at the time of excavation.
I then got to go to a lecture by archaeologist Dr Helen Wickstead who taught us more about how archaologists work and how they produce their field drawings and what many of the techniques and symbols used were. She showed us some examples of archaeological drawings which, although they have a wonderful aesthetic to them, actually only aim to be descriptive and accurate. It was fascinating to be let into this world.