Twilight Contemporary - Past: Flotsam & Jetsam

Twilight Contemporary is excited to present Flotsam and Jetsam, a group exhibition curated by Jamie Hope, which explores the secret life and spirit of objects which have been long left abandoned.

In maritime law, ‘flotsam’ and ‘jetsam’ are terms for various different types of objects that have been lost or abandoned at sea. These objects may have been cast off; ‘jettisoned’ by sailors to lighten the load of a ship that is in danger of sinking, or they may have arisen to the surface from a skeletal wreckage at the bottom of the sea. The designations: ‘flotsam’ and ‘jetsam’ were intended to provide a framework to guide the ways in which sailors encounter, interact with and claim ownership over abandoned objects.

In the context of the exhibition, these maritime terms lay the foundation for a more impressionistic meditation on the idea of the life of the lost thing. In some of the works, artists delve into their pasts and explore the nature of the things that were cast-off, or ‘jettisoned,’ over the course of their own lives. In this case, each work is a result of the artist scouring through the ‘flotsam and jetsam’ of their memory and salvaging the objects, and the special moments attached to these objects, that have wittingly or unwittingly shaped who they are today. As such, many of the works in Flotsam and Jetsam take on a lyrical, elegiac quality. Each piece is a mournful ode to the lost thing and a reflection on its quiet, melancholic resonance.

Through this process of recollection, evocation and re-presentation, one finds that these lost objects have often changed from their original form. Just as real objects abandoned at sea are corroded and encrusted in the swirling sea foam, their original edges eroded in the rolling ocean current, lost objects from our past can seem to warp and distort within the unreliable nature of memory and mis-remembrance. In Flotsam and Jetsam, each artist traces and records these changes; reminding us that objects often have a rich and varied life long after we have deserted them.

Curation and words by Jamie Hope