Eleventh International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

The museum provides opportunity to observe the process by which objects were made; however, process was not intended to have been visible. We are now able to observe the top and bottom of objects, their sides, and their back. We can examine the construction joints, the layering of materials, and the finishes and marvel at the craftsmanship as well as the difficulties and mistakes encountered by the makers. These are all relayed to us through close examination of process. The decontextualization of process was never part of an object’s purpose or being and therefore presents uncertainty to the object’s meaning. This paper considers work from the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London to reflect upon the dialogue between the inherent process of making and the exposure of process as information, which the maker or makers would not have envisioned possible. When elements of an object remain unfinished because they were never envisaged to have been seen, they are not unfinished or crude they are complete providing opportunity for process to be re-contextualized within an inversion of the object’s meaning.