Souvenir Calendar

All proceeds from the sales of this calendar will go to a funding our upcoming solo exhibition this spring at Gallery 621 in Tallahassee, Florida. This project reveals an affinity for the kitsch that comes along with exploring roadside America. Collected on numerous cross-country road trips, through a cumulative total of 47 states, our souvenirs from various sites are presented against brightly coloured backdrops. Souvenirs present a strange dichotomy - they are inherently and inextricably linked to a place, but their value relies on them becoming divorced from that place and then re-contextualised in an entirely new one. Ultimately, they live together on a shelf, comprising an oddball portrait of “America”. The site from which the object is derived becomes secondary, an abstract backdrop that enhances or rounds out the memory. ​ As a means of highlighting this displacement, each souvenir is photographed against a solid-coloured background that vaguely recalls its original context. A commemorative plate from the Field of Dreams movie site sits against a field of corn-yellow; a red & white mug from the Geographic Centre of the U.S.A. receives its missing blue. ​ Employing the visual language of product photography, our large format images again re-contextualise these takeaways and trinkets, removing them from their place on the shelf and inverting their status as something memorial into something aspirational – oversized, self-reliant monuments of travel and tourism.