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Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2021
Project Profile
Barbara Knežević, The Record Keepers, 2020, HD film; Images by Louis Haugh, courtesy the artist.
WHEN WE WANT to know___ about things we don’t know ___senses tell
us ___how we feel1
Care (full) objects BARBARA KNEŽEVIĆ DISCUSSES HER ARTWORK, THE RECORD KEEPERS.
The Record Keepers is a sculptural artwork at Cabra Library, commissioned specifically for children aged six to twelve by Dublin City Libraries together with Dublin City Arts Office and curated by Sheena Barrett. This artwork comprises a series of clear Perspex display plinths containing amethyst crystals, purple powder-coated bent steel forms with large ellipseshaped bases, amethyst-printed lycra fabric hanging from the upright steel structures, and a series of shiny, purple glazed ceramic coils resting on the surfaces of screens, steel and Perspex. Two semi-circular, fabric-covered forms act as seating devices. These forms extend an invitation to the audience to sit around and with the work. It is an invitation to contemplate the work by ‘being-with’ rather than ‘looking-at’ the artwork, providing a platform for a slower form of contemplation that suggests habitation and hospitality. On three screens placed among these objects are a series of video works that act as an affective, sensory mediation tool as to how visitors might engage with the work. These video works encourage an attentiveness to the senses and how they can be engaged to experience and explore the objects in the space. The Record Keepers is part of a series of works that I have been making that fall under the banner of ‘Tools for Wellbeing’, which considers the talismanic use of objects (particularly artworks) as tools for healing, pleasure and joy. ‘Tools for Wellbeing’ springs from my intrigue for the moments when the human body and other matter come into proximity for the purposes of non-medical, non-scientific healing. It holds the implica-
