For his solo show at Paper, Manchester based artist, Jack Brown presents an exhibition of new works on silk. As one of the many threads of his practice, for the last 20 years, Jack has been collecting the notes, shopping lists, and reminders people have lost, left behind, or thrown away. Found on the floor of pubs, on trains, and in shopping trolleys, these pieces of paper hold snippets of people’s lives: lists made out before a trip to the shops, directions to a pub for a friend, someone’s work shifts, a post it reminder, scores from a game, or a note under a windscreen wiper.
Brown’s work is concerned with the line between art practice and everyday occurrences: where or when does an object or idea become an artwork and what is the very lease that can be done to enable that transformation? Having amassed a large collection of found notes he has had these printed onto silk. Through this process, each of these notes has been pushed out of the world and into the realm of art objects, but only just, and only for a while.
Each of these hankies tell a short story that can be found in the creases of the notes, the handwriting, the language, the placement of text, as well as the mystery of shorthand notes only intended for an audience of one or two.