MATERIAL LEGACIES

Material Legacies brings together a collection of works that encapsulate the essence of three people's lives. It explores how making can create meaningful encounters with the dead. These bereaved makers, from The Hospice of St Francis, invite you to experience how they have crafted their loved ones' physical and digital heritage.

The stories are told through their physical engagement with materials and their collaborations with creative practitioners. Together the works speak of loss and self-discovery: hundreds of pin pricks turn memory to matter; clay fuses with video constructing the 'Trainman'; and fingertips massage a message of textured paint leaving their imprint on hand and canvas.

Our relationship to death is changing. The prevalence of death and dying online has created new ways of understanding those we have lost. This includes the diversification of aesthetics traditionally associated with mortality. Online environments have provided new opportunities for interacting with the dead, putting the theory of continuing bonds into practice but also creating a data boom that is an overwhelming digital legacy. The question of how we can make meaning from the things left behind will explore the entanglement of people with data, documents, traces, things, collections and archives both online and in our homes. This develops an understanding of materiality that considers the digital as a unique material, incorporating the affordances of digitality into our experiences of personal collections. It uses crafting, narrative and curation to draw these collections together, offering a plurality of experiences and aesthetics