story of a girl is a work that attempts to make present what has been experienced abstractly, exploring issues of self-documentation and personal history. I have assembled on the gallery floor an extensive collection of personal objects which I have stored over the years, objects that chronicle my childhood. These recontextualised objects are vessels that excavate and document stories of my past, making them available for interpretation and closure.

Whereas history unfolds in time, an object unfolds in space. It is with this space that I attempt to locate the tensions resulting from the repositioned objects, seemingly silent in its materiality yet reverberating with subjectivity. These familiar objects delineate the authenticity of a lived story, documenting the refinement of internal and external narratives and incidents.

My performance comprises of a ritualised act of reciprocity in which I offer the viewer an object. I tell the story of the object and attempt to give it away. A raw exchange took place. Some viewers rejected my object, took the object and returned it another day, or leave their phone number or email address in case I ever wanted it back. Some viewers accepted the object and returned to the space with a new object redefining the installation. The audience diaries list the objects with words and photographs. The viewer is invited to write a response to receiving the object in the “audience diaries”. story of a girl magnifies themes of absence and presence, of emotion, ritual and identity.