just between us

'Just Between Us' is an experimental archive, exploring communal ways of working and accessible ways of exhibiting. Using a mix of personal archives and artistic output, this project hopes to curate a record that reflects the lives lived as much as the history.
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So, what is an archive?

An archive can be an institution that holds the records and objects of a singular artist, movement, historical event or group. An archive can also be the records and objects themselves, both physical and digital, tangible and intangible. 

What makes an archive an archive though? Is it the institution that holds them? Is it the status of the persons and history they record? Is it the monetary value of the objects themselves? Or is it the people who own and run the archive? Who decides what histories are worth recording and saving? Who decides what stories are worth telling?

Is my mam’s loftful of childhood drawings, baby clothes and old photos not an archive then? My best friend’s series of teenage journals? My box of old birthday cards and notes passed in GCSE history? From toys to clothes, to jewellery and knickknacks and old diaries, the truth is we all archive ourselves in some way. These archives tend to live in dusty old lofts, shelves and boxes, stowed away simply because there isn’t the space to have them on show. When you don’t often see yourself presented in a traditional archive, museum or gallery in the way that you see yourself, the way that you know yourself, these personal archives become a way for you to do so. If we don’t store and collect the evidence of our existence, then how will anyone know we were ever there? How will anyone know our story?

For artists operating outside the institution, these personal archives become infused with the art created alongside, turning domestic spaces into studios and galleries and storage units all at once. In an internet generation, our online lives and worlds have become our archives too. For the group involved in this project, these online worlds include our Piczo and Tumblr blogs, our Wattpad fanfics and Pinterest moodboards. The digital world is becoming an art space more and more every day. Still suffering from rules and conditions as any other art space, this archive calls back to those early internet archives to suggest a bit of freedom is what is missing in the present. ‘Just Between Us’ celebrates these early archives as some of our first interactions with art too, using it as a nostalgic and accessible medium and an important part of the archive too. The physical objects alone capture a snapshot of history, but it is the way we frame the archive that tells us of the lives lived and the people behind the objects.

The group of artists involved with this project are all friends who spent their teenage years growing up together. As y2k kids in bonny Newcastle, the story this archive seeks to show is the importance of community and its self-developed ways of working when access to art spaces is limited. Steering into the nostalgia and freedom of the sites we frequented as kids, the archive functions as a build-your-own-world story, highlighting the importance of how we share history as being as important as how we record it.

The website can be explored in whatever order you choose. Explore the themes of the archive however you want, in whatever way you want. The hope is that, in exploring Just Between Us, you are able look at your own history and your own records too. Leave us some feedback on the contact page with your thoughts. What ways would you use to archive your life? How would you tell your story?

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VIEW THE ARCHIVE
glittery tramp stamp

Artist Bios

Tamara Okudu

tamaraokudu@live.com

“I’m not really an artist, I just have ADHD and have things that have to be removed from my head and made viewable”

Adele Clifford

@selvaticacrochet

Adele is an interdisciplinary artist working in costume creation and design, visual arts, music, and performance art as a medium of storytelling and worldbuilding. Her work embraces folkloric aesthetics and narratives to explore gender, sustainability, and our relationship to the natural world.

Alex Ellerton

@a.wwwwwwwwee

Walking the line between pleasant and unpleasant, my work explores the boundaries of the body and relationship with abjection.

Shawn

Shawn Nayar

@shawnnayar

Shawn Nayar is a performance artist from India who weaves his audience into collaborative enquiries.

Ellie Home

@pois0n_pustule

Inspired by the grotesque, Ellie Home explores the horrors and ecstasy of inhabiting a fleshy vessel in constant flux. Through hybrid beasts, with exaggerated and warped offshoots such as umbilical cords, nails and hair, she attacks the canvas with a provocative and perverse mix of biology.

Elouise

Elouise Blackburn

@_elouiseb

Elouise is a Glasgow-based curator and arts practitioner concerned with community practices and alternative art spaces. The importance of connection and communal workings in artist-led spaces is a leading drive in her practice.