Rosalind Barker

'A Hairy Story.......'   for Apokrisis (response)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Sevenoaks  Museum Residency

Museums give prestige to objects not venerated, objectified or valued in their own century and culture. Museums can contain the anomalous, the odd and the monstrous.  I am fascinated by what counts as worth preserving or archiving.

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Hair is one of the defining characteristics of the mammalian class. Historically a lock of hair could be a memorial, adult love token or preservation of a snip of childhood innocence. 21st century hair is about image, group membership, culture, wealth, status, celebrity and science. Hair embellished, controlled and designed in life is one of the few human anatomical parts composed of dead tissue.

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The Museum curator gives the everyday and the discarded, presence, position, and value. I have replicated this in choosing hair as my subject matter and medium, remnants collected weekly from central Sevenoaks hairdressers were preserved, archived and reinvented in ‘A Hairy Story…’