Thursday 27 January 2011

In Flagrante Colléctum: J. P. Tabiners Cathexis

This installation was shown for The MA Multi-Disciplinary Printmaking Show at the School Of Creative Arts, on the 18th to 24th June 2010 at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK.

Exhibition Statement
‘In flagrante’ is Latin for ‘caught in the act’, a legal term used when someone has been found in the act of committing an offence. ‘Cathexis’ is a word defined in psychodynamics as the process of investing huge amounts of mental and emotional energy in a person, object or idea. In psychoanalysis, Freud defines the term cathexis in sexual terms, meaning the ‘libido’s charge of energy’.


Collectors fill voids physically and metaphorically. The house today feels like a framed absence, filled with ghosts which inhabit the objects. The space a collector occupies becomes a conceptual, displayed, sense of self. Fulfilment is never attained because the effect of acquisition constantly drains away on ownership.

The house is packed to the roof with items. Snippets of humour or evidence of madness transpire in the labelling and taxonomy.


Mr. J. P. Tabiner was a man who lived a solitary life after his wife’s death in 1958. He was born in 1916 and died in 1989 after having spent 31 years with only his collections and fictitious scenarios for company. There were very few that knew John well enough to say what he spent his days doing, however notes were discovered on scraps of paper, taken by Social Services after Joan Tabiner's suspicious death:  
'JPT keeps busy, pottering around the house making models which he says are 'his salvation from a hostile world'. Concerns: Has taken to sleeping on the living room floor where he 'can look after the budgie'. Argumentative and uncompromising in nature however he appears to be compos mentis....' Anon.
After Mr. Tabiner's death, the house was boarded up and left untouched until now, prior to its demolition. Soon a clearance team will come and collect anything of value and remove anything else remaining for incineration. The house is deemed inhospitable.

No comments:

Post a Comment