FOUND OBJECT

Visiting students' Fine Art Degree Shows in Bristol in 2005, I first entered a room 'installation' based on found objects. A student had found 2,000 35mm colour slides in a public waste bin in St. Werburghs Bristol. He had no idea what they related to and had attempted (successfully) to arrange the slides into a narrative order. Students were instructed to produce short A5 booklets to describe their shows/ installations. Picking up the booklet from this student's pile, I flipped it over to skim read it / look at the pictures in reverse order - a quicker way to do it. The back page featured a photograph of me from 1977, helping to organise a large public event for Cyclebag / Sustrans, the cyclists' charity. (I became the chair of Cyclebag in 1978 and a founder member of Sustrans in 1979.) I contacted the student. In late 2004, Sustrans had 'gone digital', copied all their 35mm colour slide photo archives into a digital format and then dumped the 2,000 35mm slides into the nearest large waste bin on the street.