What do you do when a tin packed with personal memorabilia materilaises on the doorstep? The Foundling Box arrived unannounced one day in April – a compact and age-worn tin, deposited tidily on The Old Sweet Shop’s front step, unchaperoned and unlabelled.
Inside were documents relating to forty years of one family’s history, from 1925 to 1965 - ephemera ranging from the everyday (a certificate of final payment for a Frigidaire Refrigerator in Cream, one Bernatone ‘Gemini’ hearing aid in presentation case @ £72 guineas) to highly personal love letters filled with expectation, hope, regret, resignation.
Why was it here, this orphaned archive? Like a story in search of an author, the papers offered glimpses and in some cases detailed insights into a family’s life – love, marriage, birth, travel, education, parting, ageing…all are documented here.
Personal and social history intertwine – the family’s children are evacuated during WW2, and the tin includes letters written home by both the children – letters telling of haircuts and new vests, the back pages covered in kisses - and their temporary carers. Routine documents also offer a historical context – a 1961 insurance policy with a Radioactive Contamination Exclusion Clause; health hints from a wartime Barking Council “Breathe through the nose, not the mouth”; the end of term report from Vicarage Lane Girls’ School (10 out of 10 for needlework); postcards from Rio, Cyprus, East Horsley.
Reading the documents was moving, fascinating, absorbing – and also unsettling. Was our curiosity tinged with prurience? Were we intruding in a private realm, forming opinions about people we had no real knowledge of?
The moral questions raised prompted long discussions about what to do. We felt strongly that the box had been purposely given to the gallery by an unknown person in order that we should exhibit it in some way – treat it as an art work to curate. On the other hand, it seemed wrong and intrusive to lay a family’s personal items bare, to expose love letters to the public gaze that were only intended for one pair of eyes.
For The Foundling Box show we decided to obscure the more personal items, together with references to the family’s name, by the use of translucent envelopes. This gives the viewer a hint of the contents while retaining a veil of privacy for the family.
We invite you to form your own stories, reflect on your own family history, ponder the universal and often mundane experiences that unite us, the individual experiences that make each of us unique.
The Foundling Box could contain anyone’s life, and is about everyone’s.
For the private view local musician Mayda Narvey gave a live cello performance, with music chosen to complement the content of the show.
