Old / New at the museum of the Riverina in Wagga Wagga Susan wood

Those We Forget

Susan Wood, Those We Forget, 2020, Vintage wooden cupboard, Ten Books, mourning cloth and Funeral Flowers. Photographer James T Farley

Susan Wood, Those We Forget, 2020, Vintage wooden cupboard, Ten Books, mourning cloth and Funeral Flowers. Photographer James T Farley

Vintage wooden cupboard

Ten books – hand painted cover paper, bamboo paper pages, flag book structure, stencilled decorations, typewritten text extracted from contemporary newspaper reports

Mourning cloth – silk and linen, plant dyed and handstitched

Funeral flowers – glass and jet beads, wire, French beaded flower technique

Dimensions

Cupboard W 38cm, H 47cm, D 14cm

Books are each W 9cm, H 15cm, D 1.5cm

Cloth W 54cm, H 44cm

Flowers W20cm, H 10cm, D 10cm 

Artist statement

I love small town museums, which record our rural history. And I have long been fascinated by the question of what they include and what they leave out. The ‘Death and Mourning Room’ in the Broadway Museum tells stories of deaths from the past: the local member’s daughter, the heroic soldier, the notable businessman. But what of the stories that are missing from the museum? ‘Those we forget’ tells, in fragments, of Junee-related deaths we might prefer to forget. They are stories of human failings and pain: a reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same.