Christine Borland:  During my practice-based research for a WW1 Centenary Art Commission (Glasgow Museums, 14–18 NOW, and The Art Fund), I spent a year in residence at Glasgow Museums Research Centre (GMRC). There I referred continuously to a spreadsheet of objects from their World War I collection, collated from the museum’s content management system, MIMSY. Responding intuitively to the terse descriptions of materials, country of origin, dates, locations, and an imagined suggestion of a narrative, I selected objects to view, then walked long corridors in anticipation of encountering them: French Grammar book damaged by gunfire, found in a dugout at Givenchy; thirty-two charms and amulets worn by the fighting men in the Great War…. This presentation reconsiders the small performance of retrieving objects from storage.

Cat Auburn:  My practice-based doctoral research explores the inheritances of Anzac mythology and its influence on contemporary identity. This presentation reflects on the embodied approach I took toward engaging with Anzac-related objects in the collection at the Glasgow Museum Resource Centre. These objects are related to Aotearoa New Zealand’s involvement in the First World War and the strategies I employed attempted to bypass established ways of gleaning knowledge from objects in museum collections. These strategies took the form of self-styled rituals, including singing, playing music, giving tarot card readings, and interviewing the objects.

Christine Borland  is an artist based in Argyll, Scotland, and a Professor of Fine Art at Northumbria University. Her research is often developed in negotiation with experts in medical and scientific institutions and in museum collections, to make invisible practices and hidden narratives accessible through practice. She is a co-founder of the research group The Cultural Negotiation of Science. Her current project with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, titled In Relation to Linum, focuses on engendering intimate re-connection with the heritage and future of growing and making practices.

Cat Auburn  is an Aotearoa New Zealand artist, filmmaker, and AHRC Northern Bridge Consortium Ph.D. candidate at Northumbria University. Her doctoral research is practice-based and autotheoretically explores the inheritances of Anzac mythology from the First World War and its influence on contemporary identity. Auburn is a guest co-editor for the upcoming Special Edition Issue of Arts Journal on “Autotheory in Contemporary Visual Arts Practice.” She has exhibited at the TRIO Biennial in Brazil, Tyneside Cinema (UK), Baltic 39 (UK), Sarjeant Gallery (NZ), Dowse Art Museum (NZ), Te Manawa Museum (NZ), Waikato Museum (NZ), and Tauranga Art Gallery (NZ).