About

How do remnants of the past continue to shape our present and future?

Harnessing both his lived memories and found trace evidence of interactions with the Camberwell area, Dylan Watson constructs a personal memory shrine inside the Kabinett, inviting the viewer to reconsider the ways in which we construct and deconstruct our identities.

Watson is a London-based artist whose sculpture and installation practice delves into themes of class, ruin, and memory. Reinterpreting fragments of detritus and symbols of aspiration into evocative artefacts, his work creates a dialogue that is both personal and universal. Watson explores themes of mythology and identity through memory, hauntology, and popular culture.

For the artist, personal histories are immaterial artefacts that exist solely within the realm of memory. By displacing these memories, he makes an appeal to recognise time as an infinite series of structures and surfaces, invariably stripping away the undifferentiated mass of organic sensation.

Through a series of walks, Watson gleans found objects that reflect snippets of past encounters with the local area. He uses these traces of interactions to create mythic histories surrounding the area and its occupants as part of a larger unseen narrative.

Watson graduated from Chelsea College of Art in 2023.

Curated by Isabel Reed