Vasundhara Shankari Sellamuthu, The Useful and Beautiful Project, plywood, coloured veneer, brass hinges and silver votive, 55 x 12 x 30cm, 2021
The Useful and Beautiful Project is an archive of experiences of home and being at home through lockdown via poetry and marquetry. It draws on the Rajasthani folk tradition of the kavad or portable story-box. Rather than myths from epics or genealogies of patrons, it presents creative writing by residents of Walthamstow. Prompts inspired by Georges Perec’s observations of the banal everyday and William Morris’ golden rule and its inversion (What has revealed itself in the house to be useful and beautiful, or useless and ugly?) gathered responses in live and online workshops through Autumn 2020 and Spring 2021. In the process of reverse engineering the craft object, I employed digital fabrication and the hand to understand and discover newfound appreciation for this mnemonic device.
Commissioned: Urban by Nature (William Morris Big Local and Wood Street Walls)
Exhibited: Distant Fellowship - Morris and South Asia, curated by Studio Carrom, William Morris Gallery, London (2021)
Images: Felicity Crawshaw
GIF images: Ronan Haughton
Project Instagram: @usefulandbeaut