WHATNOT

20 Jun-1 Aug 2026

PV 19 Jun 2026, 6-8pm

Overview

Jo Addison / Leigh Clarke / Frances Drayson / Mark Harris / Bob Matthews / Andrew Miller / Michael Samuels / Stella Whalley / Ellie Wyatt

To be shelved can refer to objects, people, or ideas that have been left behind, forgotten, or set aside. However, it can also speak to things that are carefully stored, awaiting a future moment of relevance or a space of reverence and presentation. These contrasting positive and negative readings serve as a central motif for the show. 

The shelf has long fascinated writers and thinkers. Foucault saw it as an “ordered surface,” while Bachelard cast it as an extrovert compared to the drawer—a vertical element that organizes space from the grounded and practical to the elevated and imaginative. For Perec, shelves mapped the domestic psyche and for Walter Benjamin, they marked a pause in Unpacking My Library, when books are “not yet touched by the mild boredom of order”. As a result, the shelf is embedded in our cultural vocabulary: on the shelf (set aside or neglected), off the shelf (ready-made), shelf life (a measure of consumables and ideas). 

It is formal space that change’s function and reading depending on domestic, commercial or institutional settings. Domestically it can act as an altar where each placement is deliberate, a transformational space when a functional object can be turned into art. Institutionally it can be closed or restrictive (archive) or an open stack (lending library) recoding the shelf from vault to marketplace.  Commercially it provides desired prime real estate for the golden zoned merchandise at eye level. 

The artist’s selected for this show refer to the ideas/themes of being shelved through a variety of approaches, those working with institutional archives (Bob Matthews, Mark Harris), personal collections (Leigh Clarke, Ellie Wyatt), and the presentation and materiality of art and everyday objects (Stella Whalley, Jo Addison, Andrew Miller, Frances Drayson, Micheal Samuels).