Give Me a Museum and I'll Fill It - Curated by Eleanor Hardwick

"Give Me a Museum and I'll Fill It," an idea inspired by something Pablo Picasso once said, is something I have been dreaming about for a long time and I'm so happy to share Part One with you. Pictured below, and above as it happens, is the incredible Eleanor Hardwick - a young photographer whose work I've followed now for what seems a lifetime. I asked Eleanor to curate this post and share with me and everyone who reads it some of the things in her life that mean the most to her.




  "Probably my most precious possession in the world is my scrapbook. It's essentially everything that I want to turn into an artistic idea, taken from my head, from books, magazines and the internet, and pasted onto paper that's bound up into one book that I can keep everything in and bring anywhere with me."




"I also keep a scrapbook that is filled with as many tickets as possible from places that I have been. These are from festivals, gigs, exhibitions, films, planes, interrailing, fashion shows. I also keep all the letters and birthday cards that people have handmade me. My memory isn't always so good so it's important for me to keep memoirs of everything I do so that I can remember the experiences when I'm older."

  "My books mean a lot to me... similarly to my need to scrapbook everything and buy works from some artists I love, I particularly try to get as many art books as I can. As much as I love the vast expanse of inspiration that the internet has to offer, I still doubt the permanence of a little file floating around in space, so feel the need to have all of the art I love in tangible form. Plus nearly everything looks better on paper than on a screen."

(Left to Right): Gregory Crewdson's Underneath The Roses, Henry Darger, Tim Walker's Pictures, Tim Walker's Storyteller, Cindy Sherman, Yayoi Kusama, Rookie Yearbook One, Larry Clark's Tulsa, a zine made by my friend Phoebe, Harmony Korine's Pigxtras, Blythe Style (to which I owe so much, for inspiring me to start taking pictures in the first place), Daniel Clowes' Ghost World, Fresh Fruits, Antoine de Saint Exupery's The Little Prince, Jeffery Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides, a signed copy of Patti Smith's Woolgathering, Ryan Mcginley's Moonmilk, Lina Scheynius' second and third photobooks, Luckasz Wierszbowski's photobook, Alba Yrela's photobook, a zine made by the band Islet and a zine made for me by my friend Lauren Poor.

"Lula is the only print magazine I really really care about (other than the Rookie Yearbook). I buy every issue and always read it cover to cover. The thing that is so great about Lula is that you can tell Leith Clark curates each issue soley to please herself. And as she once said, it's women through women's eyes, not viewed from a man's perspective. It's the epitome of femininity. It doesn't feel like there's this competitive rush to have the most exclusive stories and to write about what is necessarily relevant or on trend like most other magazines do. Yet they are always steps ahead of everyone else; they wrote an article on Yayoi Kusama back in Spring 2010, yet no one else was writing so avidly about her until her exhibition at the Tate in London this year. And in that respect it makes the magazine feel somewhat timeless and indisposable. You want to keep every copy pristine and pick it up years after its "out of date". And Lula really focuses on music, theatre, art and dance just as much as fashion which is rare to find in a lot of these magazines."
 


This is a drawing I commissioned Abby Portner to draw for me. It's one of my favourite drawings I've ever seen.
I really like to collect art, just because I think it's important to surround yourself with these things to stay inspired, and I think it's neccessary to support other artists.





Clockwise: A golden baby my friend Mike gave me when I visited him in New York, a glowstick necklace I bought at a CocoRosie gig, a necklace my friend Beau made me, a patch my friend Jenkin made me, a papercraft Max from Where The Wild Things Are that my boyfriend made me, a purse made by my friend Sara, a polaroid taken by my friend Elena and sent to me as a birthday present (for which I am truly grateful as it is my favourite photograph of hers) and a doll made by Russian artist 'Takiyaje.'


"These are some drawings that my sister and my friends Ava, Mirren and Beau made for me. My most sentimental things tend to be gifts from my loved ones, especially when they've made them themselves."





"This jacket means a lot to me. I customised it myself, and the patches were a gift from Meadham Kirchhoff, who are also my favourite designers."




My modest vinyl collection means a lot to me. Most of these vinyls are limited edition or vinyl only.
(Although this photo doesn't include my mother's krautrock collection which I have adopted.)

My most precious vinyl was given to me by Kria Brekkan herself, when I met her at a festival last year. She is one of my favourite musicians, and the inside of the vinyl was filled with photocopies of beautiful artwork and setlists she had written.
 

(Left to right) Top Row: Panda Bear - Person Pitch, Terrestrial Tones - Dead Drunk, Tickley Feather - Hors d'oeuvres, Animal Collective - Transverse Temporal Gyrus
Second Row: Eric Copeland - Limbo, Prince Sunarawma - Hurricane, Animal Collective - Centipede Hz, Prince Rama - Utopia = No Person
Third Row: Gang Gang Dance - Revival of the Shittest, Islet - This Fortune, Tomutonttu - Elävänä planeetalla, The Grateful Dead - Live Dead
Bottom Row: Animal Collective - Spirit They're Gone Spirit They're Vanished, Black Dice - Miles of Smiles, Gang Gang Dance - Kamakura, Terry Riley - A Rainbow In Curved Air)

sentimental from ghostparties on 8tracks Radio.

"The songs on this playlist are here for all different kinds of reasons. Some I don't listen to much anymore, but when I put them on I feel really nostalgic about what that song meant to me at one time. One of these songs was the soundtrack to a summer spent roadtripping in America, one is from the first album I ever bought, one is mine and my boyfriend's song, several are break up songs, one I lost my virginity to, one I believe has magic powers every time it's played, one is for bedroom dancing... and lots of other reasons.'


All images and film stills by Eleanor Hardwick.
flickr / tumblr

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