Sarah Gilsenan

Everyday items are used in material-led experiments to explore the structures of storage, preservation, display, and abandoned space. Visibility, bureaucratic opacity, and the flattening of the archive are themes I explore in my work using processes such as ghostly embossed prints, assemblage, creating fragmented office furniture, and referencing architectural forms. By subverting objects of utility and inventing new records from detritus, I question notions of usefulness and seek to reframe the meaning of familiar materials.

I am interested in the mundane accumulations of life and the spaces that hold them. I carefully gather plastic packaging, receipts, fragments of building materials and personal items as souvenirs and relics, or to examine as ruins. I explore the tension between preservation and destruction, and what we choose to keep, discard, or display.