Concentrates of Place (2016-)

Tins of Place & People

by TANYA SHADRICK

MEMORIES MADE TANGIBLE.
BEGUN A DECADE AFTER A
SUDDEN NEAR-DEATH

These tins – an ongoing series – are the artist’s rest-of-life response to a sudden near-death experience: an arterial haemorrhage that happened at home on a quiet afternoon just days after the birth of her first child.

In the first years after the emergency, Shadrick worked for a time as a hospice lifestory scribe – wishing both to render service to those facing death, and to understand better her own close encounter with it. Listening to those at end of life, she became fascinated by the brief moments that seemed to last and resurface in memory – replayed on repeat, so it seemed, by those she met.

On the tenth anniversary of the emergency, she began both the One Minutes recordings and formalised what had been, before then, only an occasional habit of filling tins. What she now calls her #ConcentratesOfPlace are a deliberate way of honouring places and people.

A large portion of the collection remains private.

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Tanya Shadrick’s debut book The Cure for Sleep – the story of a life transformed by sudden near-death – will be published in early 2022 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson