CARRIER SHELL
Xenophoridae, or carrier shells, are a species of large sea snails that have the unique ability to gather and affix objects to their shells. Cementing stones, sponges, and other shells and debris to itself as it slowly shifts along the sea bed, carrier shells are the collectors of the deep. Mollusk shells grow in a spiral, so the shell of a mature Xenophora serves as a timeline of its life. With the smallest souvenirs in the middle of its spire and the larger ones on its outer whorls, the carrier shell’s material companions are evidence of a life lived. Above sea level, people have a similar affinity for collecting. Though we may not glue our objects to our backs, some of us might as well. To Carrier Bag Collective members Levi DeCoste, Hailey Ferguson, and Abby Kettner, collection is a means of structuring memory, of discerning meaning, of making sense of things. The works across Carrier Shell investigate the desire to collect, and how the objects we collect speak back to us.
Hailey Ferguson’s selected plates were found at a thrift store. The set of four was complete, however, each plate was broken in a different way. Ferguson decided to reclaim the cracks, but not restore the plates to use. Their gaps and flaws remain, even more prominent than before. These ceramic plates that were designed to be eaten off of have now transformed into collectible-style decorative plates, the kind you would see hanging meticulously on a kitchen wall, though subverted. Their chains and bulging solder have made them something different entirely. Across the space on the opposite wall sit Ferguson’s Angels on a high shelf. When she was a child her mother collected porcelain Precious Moments angels. Expensive and easily breakable, they were kept out of the reach of children. Here, Ferguson remakes her mother’s angels from memory. They are lumpy and nondescript, softened through years of forgetting, though they retain their essence. Ferguson remembers their colour, their form, and perhaps how badly she wanted to play with them. A precious collection that she was not allowed to touch, she has now transformed for herself.
Similarly, Levi DeCoste’s Seashell Tale features an object from their family’s collection. When they were a child DeCoste’s parents collected shells, and they were always particularly fascinated by a strange, three-pronged, unfinished-looking one. DeCoste would grow up to realize that the object was in fact a cross-section of a shell. Eventually their mother gifted it to them and they decided to draw it at a one-to-one scale. Here, the real and the copy, sit mirrored, speaking to each other face to face. DeCoste’s preoccupation with shells has also led to an expanded body of work about Queer ecology. While analyzing Queer symbols, DeCoste found that there was a lack of symbols for gender non-conforming and trans folks. They came to look to the snail as an emblem: snails are hermaphroditic, and they can reproduce sexually and asexually. DeCoste explores these discoveries through Vessel I, Vessel II, Syringe, and their Queer Ecological Manifesto.
Lastly, Abby Kettner’s To have and to mold features a small collection of her personal, domestic objects transformed into sand toys. Devoid of colour, the transparent, plastic husks of the objects may not be evident at first glance. These blurry, imperfect molds become even more unknowable as the viewer uses them to cast the sand. The objects and the memories they evoke for Kettner are reduced to a gritty impermanence—being made, remade, crushed, overlapped, and replicated in the box. With each cast the objects are more removed from the memory that conceived them, with each slip and shift of the sand the memories fade.
Carrier Shell shows the objects stuck to each of the artist’s outer whorls. Twisting slowly in a shiny calcite refuge, we sprawl ever outwards, amassing our own material companions.
Curatorial text written by Abby Kettner.