Anne Ramsden’s title Anastylosis refers to the activity of restoration — the archeological re-assembly of ruined monuments from fallen or decayed fragments. Her exhibition is based on photographs she took to document her installation Anastylosis: Inventory — a painstakingly chosen collection of crockery that she categorized, destroyed and then reassembled. Ramsden’s intention was not to create a ‘real archaeology’ of modern-day crockery, but to produce an ironic imitation of an archaeological attitude. She chose chinaware as the subject of classification for it’s symbolic resonance of motif and form; these objects occupy the landscape of our everyday lives and consumer culture.

As in Anastylosis, Ramsden’s interest in museology and classification appears in several of her past projects. In Relations (1988) she -presented a conceptual work that functioned as a meditation on photography and museums. Her site-specific interventions Residence (1994) and Garden (2001) both engaged in museal narratives. During the process of creating Inventory, Ramsden collected 308 pieces of crockery and systematically ordered them. Once destroyed, she photographed them first as fragments and then as restored objects. They were divided into six colour groupings and reassembled using six coloured epoxy glues — white dishes with red glue, yellow objects with purple glue, etc.  The result was a veiny patchwork — the brash coloured epoxy clashing with the fine designs of the cups, bowls and flatware.  Each photograph acted as a document of re-assembly, with the coloured glue accentuating the act of destruction. The viewer cannot help but notice the trace of action, violence and breakage as they observe the fragments of these once perfect objects. 

The works in Anastylosis are a playful meditation on the impossibility of wholeness and our desire for a unified and invulnerable world.  In this manner, the photographs of these resurrected objects are an archeology of the present, where a photographic representation is substitute for the original object to reveal its dislocated, fragmentary nature.