Ash's WhatHowWhy

Notice how long it takes you to get here. What do you carry with you? A blanket worn as a coat, green tea in a bracelet, a bronze face like a potato, kowhai seeds in the crevices of soles, let me show you. The feeling of being a host in a place that's not home. What do you wear to work in a foreign place? (2015) is a title and an invitation. I invited 7 artists into an exhibition project that I was invited to make work for. They could send me any work or set of instructions to be installed or executed on or around the former propaganda boards outside a Soviet steel factory in Georgia.

The work emerged through conversations in person, over emails, over shared sources and discussions about national and personal histories and genealogies. Then the works were posted, emailed or carried on planes. With the help of local artists, the pieces were installed, produced or performed.

I invited others because the site was too exciting to keep to myself, and because I felt uncomfortable with a solo presentation in a location formed to serve an authoritarian ideology. I was also motivated to bring a collection of practices together as it as a way to gather up my 'intellectual neighbourhood' as a prepared to move to a new country and lose all reminders of my life at that time.