Artist statement :

“In my work I have long been concerned with collection, curation and display and in the transition of objects from their original site to the museum and what happens to them along the way in the process. The passage of time affects meaning, adding value to an artifact in some cases and taking it away in others. Plaster casts of the stone tools in this installation heading towards a kind of extinction through the act of being de-accessioned are displayed beneath a photograph of a recently excavated prehistoric skeletal whale in the process of being cast. I am interested in these connections and disconnections.” (read more by visiting the whole series)

About Richard Barnes:

“Richard Barnes divides his time between commissioned work and personal projects. He looks at architecture as artifact and, placing it within the context of archaeology, challenges our conceptions of the way we inhabit and represent the built environment. His photographs are in numerous public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the New York Public Library and the Harvard Photographic Archive. He was a recipient of the Rome Prize for 2005-06.” (read a whole lote more)