Foraging

The carpark is cold, damp, busy already. Dull grey sky darkens the tarmac, the gravel. Out of hours, receding waves of people have dumped a line of unwanted crap, perhaps someone else’s treasure. A fine sheet of Styrofoam floats through it in the breeze, dragging back across the tarmac to the automatic doors which draws a slow expectant breath – holds, then heaves open as I walk forward across the threshold. Rushing the building I drop inside with melodious glee. The hot puff of the heat pump exhales across my face.

The same huge row of metal shelves waits beneath the yellowed ceiling tiles, shelves straining, frame squatting from better days. Among their scuffed surfaces and todays donated hoardings, I find a twisted strand of pearly beads, dulled through changing hands, and a scarlet floral brooch. Memories explode in my head. My grandmother, in her red brick terrace near the abandoned chimneys, always ready for work, showed us how to bake delicious Welsh cakes dusted with extra sugar. All chattering happily, happily like hungry sparrows around a kitchen table covered with sticky batter and currants, the pearl brooch out of place on her humble tabard.

The grey shelf is scattered with dozens of tarnished and neglected memories; the jewelled adornments lack lustre, dead metal relics of once living Kiwis lie in configurations of dignified ambiguity. I scoop them up with every discovery. A safety chain snags a crocheted poppy pin, maddened by the brittle plastic of another time-worn piece. One by one they plop into my shopping basket. The tides have changed, life will be forced back into the exhausted stash.

I leave the swell of people and past, carrying their whispered secrets in a white plastic bag. Tomorrow I will lay out those thrifted memories. Then look for containers to hold them. Among the sublime collection of fashioned flotsam and jetsam I keep, there will be some that skirt too close for comfort, fallen bridges between eras. Carved bone that pierces the ideals of beauty. Golden talismans, violent labours too brutal to bear. I will arrange them into boxes, feeling my way, then I will wear them impregnating them with the soft glow of new meaning. As all memories began.

Foraging, 2024

Live performance and installation of costume brooches.