Neil Mabbs

Museums collect and display artefacts in order to educate and inform their visitors, and to preserve the important cultural achievements of the past and present. My work focuses on a range of items that are not ‘treasured’ – the used and rejected objects found in charity shops. The work explores the idea that in every store, every object is a potential ‘artefact’, and that everything has significance. An Inventory of Loss is a visual inventory of rejected objects found in charity shops, the museums of the everyday life of the past, where things that have lost their former use value, now search for a new one.

My research attempts, through a series of books, to deconstruct the semiotics of the forlorn: the semiotic structure of abandoned objects found in charity shops and car boot sales, the ‘white elephant goods’ that have outlived their usefulness to the person who owns them. Drawing on the ordinary and everyday, my work explores the relationship between us and the transient nature of objects we surround ourselves with. My work attempts to study the changing fortunes of a range of items and document their journey from useful or treasured artefacts to abandoned and hopeless objects. It aims to explore how these objects lose their appeal, how they may go out of fashion or stop working, and how they lose their social or cultural significance and their personal associations.