Polly Bennett - What’s Left Behind
36 x 25 cm (each), MDF, air-drying clay, grout, pigment and clay pipes, 2020
Originating in Africa, Memory Jugs became extremely popular in the Victorian era as they memorialised the dead with personal objects, and connected the dead to the afterlife by way of water. Looking at just the surface of these vessels, Polly has used discarded broken clay pipes from the Thames to reflect upon the individuals who once owned them. It is said that personal possessions are often broken before being applied to Memory Jugs to help release the individual’s spirit. These two panels show the positive and negative to emphasise the void that is left once someone has gone.
Polly Bennett
Polly recreates experiences to represent the conditions of the landscape, with immediate observational responses produced 'in-situ’, and in collaboration with the rural environment. Recently she has focused on what the river Thames leaves behind, and how it holds history. She visits the Thames foreshore collecting Victorian clay pipes or rusty manufacturing instruments, which revive the memory of the individual who once made or used them. Manual work is integral to her practice, involving these found objects in a collated fashion which results in vessels of remembrance. Polly is based in London and completed a BA at City & Guilds of London Art School, followed by a fellowship for The Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers Decorative Surfaces.