Carried Away by Auckland Museum

Author:Auckland Museum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2019-04-16T16:00:00+00:00

Closing the bag

The chameleon nature of the bag has enabled it to live multiple lives in multiple cultures, under various pseudonyms and disguises. Despite the bag being so public, so visible, it is often misaligned in history. Misconstrued and homogenised. A rather dramatic statement – a bag is just a bag, right? Yet, as we unpack the bag, looking beyond its function or documenting a chronology of design, its proverbial baggage is evinced. The bag reveals as much as it conceals.

Loose change, a London Underground map, and cholesterol medication: the items found in some of the bags in the collection offer a snapshot of the private lives of the individuals who once owned them. A voyeuristic thrill. Digging deeper, the metaphorical content bags carry collectively is uncovered. The weight of Victorian principles continues to be carted around by bags from a European tradition, attesting to remnants of gender politics and capitalist consumption. The unbalanced representation of European handbags from the Victorian era in the Applied Arts and Design Collection speaks to a vestige of colonialism. The acquisition of a Deadly Ponies’ Mr Robin bag is the most recent example of our commitment towards building a more contemporaneous and local collection.

Unpicking the threads, the fabrication of every single bag speaks to processes and materiality that link to a wider whakapapa of culture. In Carried Away: Bags Unpacked, bags are grouped by their base construction material – animal, plant, mineral, or synthetic – resulting in visceral juxtapositions that unsettle a standard chronology or categorisation. Inciting questions through disruption. Bringing forth unexpected differences and similarities that challenge assumptions.

Following the exhibition structure, the book is arranged in sections according to the four materials.29 Each section begins with the unusual, followed by bags connected to this place – Aotearoa – before continuing with unexpected pairings. The intention is to unpack the values and meanings assigned to bags by individuals and society, past and present, that remain relevant not only to museums and their collections, but to us today. I invite you to make your own comparisons, to raise queries, to add to the stories of the bags exhibited and the one you may or may not carry.

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