THE GREAT EXHIBITION
Artist: Patrick Pound
Year: 2017
Description: "An avid collector, Patrick Pound is interested in systems and the ordering of objects: an attempt, perhaps, to make things coherent. As Pound says, ‘to collect is to gather your thoughts through things’."
Significance: Pound’s practice includes purchasing orphaned photographs on eBay, in his words, “photographers used to put photographs in albums and in boxes to be viewed and reviewed at will. Photographs were never made to be scanned and redistributed on eBay. Whether they are analogue or digital, printed photographs have an afterlife that no one saw coming.” His collections of prints, highlight clichés, in both subject matter and treatment of photographs, for example the destruction of people no longer wanted in physical memory. Through his work, Pound observes the ubiquitous changing nature of photography which, “used to be the medium of record. Now it is equally the medium of transmission.”
