Quotidian Relics
Quotidian Relics is an ongoing series of crates, originally started for the exhibition This Side Up, at Houston Center For Contemporary Craft.
*Text by curator, Sarah Darro
"In his "Quotidian Relics" series, Adam Manley applies the extraordinary level of care usually reserved for works of art to the mundane objects that form the invisible infrastructure of art spaces. In order to build these hyper-specific, finely crafted crates, he sought donations and received objects from museum preparation departments across the country, including the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Mingei International Museum; Racine Art Museum; Museum for Art in Wood; Wharton Esherick Museum; and Fuller Craft Museum. These objects arrived with lively stories about the art handlers and preparators who used and modified them, many of whom have rigorous studio craft practices in their own right. He then tagged and recorded the objects–the first of which was a complete set of mops from Houston Center for Contemporary Craft–using invented collections-management numbers before building the detailed crates to hold them. Through this body of work, Manley asserts that the material culture and creative production of unseen art workers are as valuable as the works of art they care for. "