Responding to the intriguing history and collections of the museum, Lyndall Phelps, Abi Spendlove and Katie Gillam-Hull presented Accumulate, an exhibition of artworks and interventions created over three years that shone a light on the hidden elements of the museum collection.
This exhibition was the final celebration of their work bringing together art and history. In partnership with UH Arts, the University of Hertfordshire’s arts and cultural programme.
Dr Alana Jelinek, Research Fellow - School of Creative Arts, University of Hertfordshire"What unites the three artists of the Accumulate exhibition is their shared fascination with failed project of collecting, preserving, conserving, and understanding that motivate both collectors and museum professionals who work with these historical collections. Each artist has a slightly different relationship to the questions that museums and collections evoke."
Katy Gillam-Hull
Katy’s delicate objects referenced the remarkable Salaman tool collection. Exploring the aesthetic and functional qualities of the tools, she created small-scale copper and wire pieces that invited us to reconsider these artefacts.
Lyndall Phelps
Lyndall invited conversations between selected collection objects and her own exquisite handmade artworks. She examined St Albans’ industrial past, from Ballito’s ladies’ stockings, Ryder & Sons packet seeds to H. Rose & Sons’ handmade brushes. Research led her to consider the origins of the museums’ collections; the first collectors, acquisitions and absent objects.
Abi Spendlove
Abi was inspired by fragments of stained glass found in the museums’ collections and created a range of reflective, highly-coloured pieces. She re-sized selected shards to large proportions, using scale and transparent materials to celebrate their historic significance, detail and craftsmanship.
