TRACe: the Museum of Memory by Roma Tearne
Limited edition of 50, coverless, 112 pages, with red hand-stitched binding and ribbon wraps, a collograph print by Roma Tearne, colour photograph, two specially commissioned hand-typeset letterpress printed pages.
Paperback first edition of 200.
Offset-litho colour cover, black & white, 36 images, 198mm x 129mm,
“On entering you will notice that the collection within these rooms appears to belong to one person alone. However, I hope that on closer inspection it will become clear that the exhibits belong to everyone who has ever lived.”
Drawing on Tearne’s background, and experience of loss – she left Sri Lanka for the UK with her family, at the start of the civil unrest during the 1960s – the book imagines an archive and museum collection cultivated from a trunk of photographs and artefacts from an unknown donor. With no known provenance and in poor condition, the collection stands in as a substitute for the lost possessions of every dislocated individual – whether a displaced person or refugee, or simply someone who has been forced by circumstance to leave the familiar behind, losing special objects in the process.
People often cannot help looking for artefacts which belong to their past and are unable to rest if they can’t find them. TRACe provides that rest – it is the story of a collection, and the house which becomes a museum to hold those possessions.
Books will be despatched after the publish date: 25 May 2023
Peculiarity Press regrets that due to Brexit related VAT changes which came into effect on 1st July 2021, they are no longer able to send books to EU countries. We have no wish to disappoint people but sadly the cost and administration is too onerous. An edition of TRACe will be available later in the year via EU Amazon sites.