To Love and To Hold

‘To Love and To Hold’ (2023) is a collection of salvaged materials which have been bound together with twine. This work contains (amongst other things) egg boxes, old love letters, receipts, broken zips, cardboard and leftover thread. While some of the material is personal, much of this package has been found in public spaces, such as a pavement or a skip. 

This discarded material is also an archive of many lives. The work reflects a tangible stain of consumption, or what is left behind. In the careful wrapping of these materials, the objects become bound with care. Reminiscent of a treasured object, the materials become valuable again, to be seen and held. This practice navigates a language of recycled objects, an alphabet of scraps and tenderness.  

The trolley serves as a visual echo of recyclers on the streets of Cape Town, who laboriously pull heavy trolleys piled high with recyclable material. While this labour forms a large part of the city's informal recycling, their work is mostly ignored and overlooked. In the context of the art fair, these recycled materials ask to be looked at again. What happens to waste after it leaves the home? Lugged around on a trolley, the bundle is both a burden and a site of memory, pulled behind by its owner.