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ShoeBox

Jimmy Ong March 2013

 

Last month while in Singapore inventorising artworks returned from VWFA, I came across the shoebox again. It has moved with me from one studio to another, a catchall of postcards, old photos, scribbles and notes accumulated from the time before the World Wide Web. Wish I can delete them as easily on screen, but it seems to be the last baggage from the 80s and 90s of my "image bank". Photos of places I have lived and worked in, postcards of  artworks from museums in my travel, photos of my own artworks, and stray images that I needed time to think over, a doubletake saved for a future time...

Presently my own computer desktops reflect the same: clippings and J-Peg downloads of other peoples' photos, video clips, labels, quotes, etc.  grapped from the Internet.  Fortunately all such appropriation are erased from the screens after the work is done....

Through the years I have been embarrassed about the shoebox, giving away here and there to my friends in Singapore, photos that contain their faces. Or reuse some postcards as labels and quick thank-you notes. Or just shredding by hand, some painful memories of lost friends and lovers...