23 postcards of hotels: 22 never sent
Thinking about ways of classifying my postcard collection, I found a number were from large multinational hotels, mostly American, probably 1970s. The obvious question is; why were they never sent? There is an inherent pathos to an unsent card; a communication unmade, a stillborn message; but yet the cards were kept. So I started thinking about the reasons one might fail to send a postcard. Gradually the reasons became more bizarre, a kind of narrative emerged. A book became the obvious form for this work. The cards are printed in black and white on coarse-grained sugar paper, the memories evoked by each is typed across its back.
The Brussels Airport Sheraton.
When the book was accepted for Picture This, the Brighton exhibition and conference, the curator asked if it could be projected. This clarified to me the importance of the book’s physicality, the look of the printing and the paper used. So we agreed that it would be displayed in front of a projection. I made a slideshow of hotel bedrooms. The book went on a pseudo-antique table with a pseudo-antique lamp; perfect hotel furnishings.
Installation view
A strong synergy was evident between the sequence of desolate, and increasingly desperate, anonymous hotel rooms and the delusional world of the book.
The book in a bedroom
The book in a diffent bedroom
