Heather Parnell

“The banal, the quotidian, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the infra-ordinary, the background noise, the habitual? […] How are we to speak of these common things, how to track them down, how to flush them out, wrest them from the dross in which they are mired, how to give them meaning, a tongue, to let them, finally, speak of what it is, who we are”. Georges Perec, Species of Spaces, 1974.

I have had a longstanding fascination with the mundane stuff that is part of everyday life. I collect particular ephemera, conscious of the relationship between these often-overlooked objects and the ways in which we live. Since 2015 I’ve worked with things found in my pockets such as paper tissues and receipts, or the ground on which I’ve walked. Stitching, printing, casting and light are some of the processes I’ve experimented with to transform them. I’m most excited by the sensory qualities of substances and materials that offer up new possibilities when used with an object, subverting and shifting what is taken for granted.