By Elida Silvey

Dotted across and propped on podiums of different sizes, orange tangerine, lemon yellow and lime green jellies entice onlookers through the glass encased gallery space in Central London, inviting them to come in and touch. Inside these jellies are curiously encapsulated objects — a Casio watch, crumpled sugar-soaked newsprint, a stretched thin hair tie, to a CD split down the middle, among others — all playing with the concept of an alternative archive.

“The Body is an Archive” is a research project by British artist Elspeth Walker that explores the interweaving themes of bodily archives, the limitations of consent and art as the catalyst for catharsis. Her work pokes fun at the art world’s idea of a traditional archive, with its white gloved hands and carefully temperate rooms. Instead, she creates her own unconventional archive, filled with messy, gloopy, and tongue-in-cheek representations of her own bodily memories.

From March 23rd to the 28th, 2023, “The Body is an Archive” was showcased at Liquid Gold Studios in London as a five-day exhibition and exists as one part of a broader project exploring alternative archives. I made my way down to her studio, now stripped of its colorful jellies, to have a conversation with the artist and explore these themes further.

Elida Silvey: What does an alternative archive mean to you?

Elspeth Walker: Alternative archive is kind of this overarching title. I sat and thought, “What are you actually doing with your artistic practice?” I explore a lot of memory, but it's becoming also a bit like how — and I was quite interested, working in a library — how we can do things differently. I don't have an answer for what the alternative archive is, I'm kind of exploring it. So, “The Body is an Archive” is kind of using my own memories and my own form of translating them and looking at very temporary structures. Also, I think alternative archives are deeply political, but also there's this idea of, yeah, what happens when you kind of make it temporary. Let's use non quite academic, really expensive materials. I'm an everyday person; let's see what my memories are worth.

It is also playing with the facts of quite personal things and calling out how there are a lot of ephemeral archives. A massive thing that I've learned from working in a library space is that there is a lot of conversation going around the ethics of archives and library spaces, because obviously in the past few years, we've all woken up to quite a lot of social [and] political issues, but they are spaces that for a very long time have upheld quite bad structures and attitudes. But at the same time, a lot of them are spaces for new and radical things and also they're public spaces. So at the same time as upholding of an old structure, I would say they're very energetic spaces for the new as well. There's this weird contrasting mix of how they act in the present and how they actually preserve the past and how then people have to be within that space.

An alternative archive, for me, is something that kind of pokes at our understanding of traditional institutional forms of archiving. This whole overarching project is trying to figure out what I mean by that.

You kind of touched on this a little bit, but what drew you to the subject matter? Was it trying to understand that aspect of archives, or was it trying to challenge the way that you felt about an archive and how you existed within that world?

A lot of my work has always been around memory in different forms. I realized that writing can technically be a form of archiving. It's definitely from working in a space and being part of spaces in the art world that I don't feel very comfortable in. I have a working-class background. I grew up in the middle of nowhere. My family doesn't have connections in the art world, and that's not me getting the orchestra out, but being honest that I don't know this space and I don't know how it works. But also, growing up, being told that's just how facts are, that's how history is stored.

I think I'm quite interested in how we create truth and how we form our realities, and archives are a massive part of that. It's also looking at how we are allowed to express things, how we're allowed to remember things. It's this recurring theme that I was like, I actually wanna sit with this for a little while. I wanna actually dedicate some time publicly poking some fun at this or commemorating ways of doing it that aren't your bog standard.

It does feel visually very playful as well. I like that you said “poking fun at this idea.” It definitely comes through.

I think that's an important part of it. I'm not trying to be funny but in the sense of allowing humor to exist in an archive or allowing it to be something quite ridiculous or absurd. It makes me feel like I'm not in a dusty library. Where it's all gilded. It's all like, you know, high shelves and locked doors and sign this form to touch this book, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. White gloves.

Yeah. White glove kind of thing. And it's like, oh my gosh, this is such a delicate thing. It's like, nah, it's something in jelly. And I'll talk about it like that. When people are like, what do you do? I'll say, put stuff in jelly. You know? I mean, there is way more personally for me to do it, but there has to be a bit of humor there — it depends on what I'm exploring — but for this one, there had to be, I think. Also, I was using jelly. You can't take yourself seriously when you're using jelly.

In your excerpt about the exhibition, you say that you're exhibiting these works as a way to remove the preservation aspect of an archive. This kind of made me wonder, as it was a five day exhibition — did you mean for it to become destroyed by the end of it?

Yeah, so the whole point of doing the exhibition was actually the second form of research. So what I did is I sat and I made these jelly sculptures, memory little tanks, in here, and then I realized I felt uncomfortable with this artistic idea that I've made something, it is great, it is finished. And I was like, that's not really doing anything. I've made these things; I'm looking at archiving, but archives are given over to the public. I have to do that with these; I have to do that in some way.

I think the public element was really important. I didn't know how people were going to interact, and actually, my feelings towards that changed. On the opening night, it was a big way of getting people to be in the space. I think also the work started to be about consent as well. So there was a performative element to the exhibition where I didn't tell anyone, but every time someone touched it, I made a tally. I saw them touch it. I made a tally.

I had a sign saying: “Please note that this doesn't say 'do not touch', but this is my body.”

I was quite interested in presenting something very vulnerable in something weird like jelly and then seeing how people would view it. Would they view it actually as my body because it's in an archive and it's given over to the public? Do they feel they have a right to it? Which kind of goes back to like when you have someone's personal love letters in a museum. We all love reading them, but did someone ever want that to be in the light of day? What's right? I mean, it's not that this is precious, but also consent has become a thought process within all of this and my other works due to my personal experiences.

I wanted that weird presence in there being like, yeah, you can touch it, but I am here. At first, it felt quite cathartic because the jellies kind of stopped meaning the memories that I'd given over, and I was like, okay, I feel quite detached from it now in quite a healthy sense. Then, weirdly, I got really precious over the jellies themselves.

Like it was like transferred over to the jelly?

Yeah, it was, and the objects within them. It wasn't necessarily about the memory they were holding anymore. It was this physical manifestation; it became the emotional outlet and that's the thing that I was caring for. As it went on and more people kind of came in and touched, and some people came in and actively destroyed. I did a triangle when people would actively destroy them. It was just interesting.

It was planned as part of this performance to get people more awake to the work they're interacting with. I didn't tell anyone about it. I didn't want to influence their behaviour or give them the domino effect [where] once one person asks, and then everyone asks. Actually, some people said they were really uncomfortable with it after they read the sign. Actually, most people, when they walked past on the street, walked by, but lots of people stopped because of that sign.

Some people got talking to me and once they did, they were like, oh, I no longer want to touch this. They see I'm a human and they feel that in the space maybe. Or they feel my presence watching.

The touching and interacting element was actually the whole point of the exhibition. It was giving it over to the public and seeing what they would do and also trying to make them aware of what they're doing.

It was very cathartic. Making them in the first instance was like a personal way of archiving and getting this thing out. I was a bit shit-scared putting them in front of people, but kind of not because I've done the scary thing of creating them. Of choosing these objects, putting it online. Now I'm putting it [out] to the public and I was like, I also have a right not to tell people what it is.

Which kind of gave me power over the memories again. I think there was this moment of like, it was about power and control, so I kind of regained control — some of them are quite sad or some of them now feel sad. Some of them aren't; some are just fun, but it was cathartic. Then, as I said, it weirdly progressed into this thing of me being like a mama over these little jelly things.

Elspeth’s work in “The Body is an Archive” is an exploration towards a purging of memory, of creating value in something otherwise overlooked, challenging our ideals of consent and serving as a playful symbol for those whom the art world has deemed insignificant. Elspeth boldly challenges the art world by, in her own words, just “[putting] stuff in jelly”. ♦

The Body is an Archive: Elspeth Walker on Consent, Alternative Archives and Art as Catharsis

By Elida Silvey