Nani Graddon currently lives in Sydney on Gadigal and Bidjigal Land. She works across many artistic mediums to contemplate australian Society and her place within it. Nani is interested in the institutionalisation of knowledge and how to encourage movement into often stationary definitions of people, objects, and histories. Nani has worked collaboratively in Sydney, Hobart, and Glasgow, organising, and exhibiting in group shows. She is currently undertaking her Honours in Fine Arts at UNSW Art and Design. After completing her degree she hopes to continue to work collaboratively in the arts.

PINGING POTS

My grandparents came with an array of objects collected from many parts of the world. They picked up and moved these objects from England to Sydney, and then to Hobart where I thought they had been put down for good. As a child I was allowed to look but not touch these objects as they stood stationary in cabinets or on shelves. I was told stories about where they came from and why they were collected. As my Grandad passed away and Grandma moved into care due to her failing memory the room was dismantled, and many of these stories began to fade if not becoming forgotten entirely. The objects became motionless their importance fading as the human movement around them dissipated.

Recently I have become interested in these forgotten stories; not only in relation to my grandparents lives but also in relation to the stories the objects were apart of before they were bought by my family. What stories had my grandparents forgotten to tell me? What had these objects once meant to other people and other places?

My artworks are replicas of a bright yellow vase of my Grandma's. She thinks Grandpa bought it for her in Italy, but she's not so sure anymore. My version of the vase has been badly fired, the glaze does not sit well on the clay body, this tension causes the vases to ping, crackling uncomfortably as they sit still upon a shelf.

This work contemplates stories lost in the stationary display of collected objects. It considers institutional display (galleries and museums) as well as collections like the one owned by my grandparents. My vases ping in protest of their stillness objecting to the singular and stationary nature by which their history is now defined.