Reflections and experiences of archiving from artists and their beneficiaries
In this post, Artists and estates who participated in Art360 Foundation projects from 2014 to 2025, reflect on their archiving practices. Their quotes are taken from a series of short documentary films made by the Foundation.
Becoming involved in an archiving process moves artists from a horizontal, chronological experience of their work to a more vertical one, enabling them to step back and forth between their past and present work.
Reactions during archiving can range from the practical – making archive considerations a part of their daily practice, for example throwing away superfluous items; to more psychological, for example finding that looking back paradoxically encourages a greater focus on the present and the future.
Positive responses to the archiving process include artists responding to seemingly random, little objects in their or others’ archives, that spark an idea or new creative thought. Artists found these incidental items as relevant as written and photographic documentation.
Some artists have discussed the role of archiving for women artists, and how historically there is little record of women artists in archives - revealing the broader need for society to preserve what is important, even when the value of certain artwork may not be recognised by individuals or groups, and when archiving is not seen as part of the artistic practice itself.
Conversely, artists also shared that contributions which had been marginalised by mainstream culture and institutional structures, could be critically and socially re-appraised through documentation and archiving.
Artist as expert
Throughout the archiving process, many artists spoke of the associations and amalgamations within their body of work, best identified by the artist themself.
“As I write up the work I'm actually referring back to works from you know the mid 90s, in order to make the whole thing mesh. And it does feel a little bit odd because obviously when I was making those works I had no idea how they were going to sort of connect or reappear later on. But it's also interesting how there seems to be a sort of odd ecology to the way those particular works or particular ideas will weave through time.” – Adam Chodzko
“It can be quite overwhelming, you know you're the expert on all this stuff and it's only you who knows how important that one little Post-It note with a little quote on it is. It's finding those little jewels that frame everything. Archiving has been a bit like that, for each project finding those things – and then knowing where to stop.” – Ruth Ewan
“Looking back at the range of things means you start to see the patterns.” – Terry Smith
“What matters for me about an archive or or some sort of resource around the work that I have made is to begin to approach the possibility of excavating meaning over time.” – David Ward. David noticed arcs in his work, as well as certain themes growing and shrinking in prominence, making him reflect on how influenced he may have been by conventions of his time.
Archives within archive
Artists can be experts not only on their own work but on the collective work or movements they were a part of, and work that influenced theirs. Archiving helps to preserve this understanding and body of work.
“I felt it was important, imperative that we as a people [African Caribbean British] write our own history and I decided photography is what I want to use to pursue this idea of documentation.
It feels like a responsibility to document these things, because I've chosen to make it such. Having been told that we contributed nothing, I didn't want the period that I existed in to be a period in time when our contribution wasn't somehow listed.” – Vanley Burke
“I am an archive” – Barbara Steveni. Whilst archiving the Artist Placement Group’s works, Barbara Steveni realised that she held a lot of the history inside her own self. She then started doing archival walks, visiting places connected to the group's history and sharing her knowledge.
Ruth Ewan spoke about how research-based her artwork is: archives inspire her work and she works in tandem with them. One of her projects, ‘A Jukebox of People Trying To Change The World’, is a music archive of 2000 politically-motivated songs.
“I often research through archives. I spend a lot of time in other people's archives or in public archives. Quite a lot of my work’s been inspired by archives. So within the archive there are archives…” – Ruth Ewan
Archiving by the artist
Before getting external support, some artists had boxed and described their artworks and research as they went along. For others it was more haphazard, with items stored but not necessarily annotated.
Many of the artists involved in the project had different objectives in being part of the programme and were starting from different archiving positions. For example:
Maria Chevska’s archive was physical files, and boxes in her attic, including a whole room installation. She wanted to digitalise it and got support doing that.
Sarah Staton had kept an analog archive of her older material, slides and photography which needed digitising.
Terry Smith doesn’t usually produce a permanent artwork but he collects everything around the project, be that napkins, drawn on bits of paper slides or items taken from places, plus he has notebooks and workshop recordings.
Non-linear processes
Many of the artists involved in the programmes, remarked that it can be hard to archive the research and development element of their work, as their processes are not often linear or the outcome of documented, step by step desktop research.
Artists reflect that the archive process can help with creativity and creation. Inspiration can come from a remembered conversation years later. Or, they realise what they are doing now connects in some way with an earlier artwork of their own, which was a one-off but then becomes part of a pattern.
“You know I make something and then suddenly I realized I did this before and, because all my notebooks are still here, I can go back and find that note, that drawing.” – Clare Barclay
“You never really know at what point an object or a publication or even a paragraph might resonate with you as a creative person and sometimes not even as a creative just as an individual and we've had stories where people have written poems you know based on objects found in the archive.” – Vanley Burke
Learnings and observations
Categorising
One of the key learnings for several artists was the importance of categorising their artworks by theme. An example of this is Alan Dimmick, who archives his artworks from a position of place, categorising photographs by by where they were taken. This place-based approach to archiving has its roots in Alan listening to his mum’s oral history of the West End Glasgow.
Cataloguing
Many artists throughout the programme discussed different approaches to cataloguing.
Alison Wilding commented that “everything [physically] has always been spread all over the place”. However, she kept notebooks of all her works going back 50 years, coded with a numbering system, and which record who owns them, where they’ve been and where they ended up.
Liliane Lijn wrote notes and manuals about reconstructing her artworks, installations, at the time they were first shown, plus notes on her use of materials in her artworks
Distilling
Rose Frain spoke about making a distillation box from each of her installations, with the dual purpose of archiving and to facilitate re-exhibition.
And through the archiving process, Adam Chodzko realised he had perhaps preserved too much, thinking everything was necessary. He moved to sifting items into a coherent narrative.
“Actually partly the archiving process has been really useful for that kind of self-knowledge where you realize actually I don't need to return to that stuff…I just kept everything, every rush, every note… then thinking here's a pathway through it this is really useful, this might be useful to you, this is this is what I’ve chosen to offer as archival evidence, and a series of works, rather than here's 40 external hard drives and 30 terabytes of stuff.” – Adam Chodzko
Websites
Adam Chodzko ultimately found the best way to describe and catalogue his works was as a website: “One of the things that I've been concentrating on with the archive is a kind of writing up of what all the works are, which is primarily manifesting itself in the form of a website.”
Websites make it very easy to link separate entities together through hyperlinks. This can also be done with database labels and tags. But websites are an easy way to make your archive publicly available, even if you decide to protect it with a password.
Liliane Lijn created a website cataloguing her artworks, detailing their materials. Lijn finds it useful herself, to look up her own work. The website is a first port of call for visitors. Then if interested they get in touch with her. “Unfortunately it is not complete – that’s a huge work in itself.”
Leaving out private thoughts
How do artists navigate archiving private thoughts or notes from their practice? This is a topic that came up frequently in discussions as part of the programme and emphasises the need for artists to have a role in archiving their works to retain control over how their work will be displayed and kept.
There is no set framework for archiving so this challenge becomes more difficult if artists have not had a role in the archiving process.
For example, Alison Wilding states that she wants her notebooks burnt: they’ve been requested for preservation by the Henry Moore Institute but she has declined this request. Alix MacSweeney comments that Peter de Francia did not wish for his personal letters to be in the public domain. Others mention they would not like emails included in an archive of their work.
A key learning throughout the programme for all artists is the importance of having control over what goes into their archive and what stays out.
Living archive
Several artists stated that they wished their archives to be used by and useful for the public, for example wanting to share art books, proposing artworks and resources could be made available in a lending library. However, there are licensing implications to this that need to be considered when allowing artworks to be used by another party.
An example of this is artist Alastair MacLennan who gave his archive to University of Dundee where he studied, wishing for it to be a ‘living archive’, which he defines as “something that is used”. Art students are allowed to borrow items from the archive and return them intact. “I'm still giving stuff to the archive I mean there's things in this other room that'll be going into the archive sending it off to Dundee when I pass over I'm no longer here I wanted to make things simple for my relatives my sisters and so on they might not what the heck to do with this strange stuff.”
Other artists within the programme who discussed similar ambitions around providing archival materials for public use include Vanley Burke and the John Latham Estate.
“We've had numerous researchers. I’m just pleased to be able to see that materials that I've collected and photographs informing people and influencing and they're able to use them if you like to illustrate their thoughts and ideas.” – Vanley Burke
“[It’s] different to how it was but this is the way that we've interpreted his practice and what we feel is appropriate as a space for for his ideas, so when you're embodied within an artist's life, as you have to be within Flat Time House you get a wider sense of of an individual.” – John Latham estate
Conservation and storage issues
A key challenge that many artists encountered whilst archiving was storage and conservation.
“I come across those conservation issues in my own studio, in my own storage…” – Ruth Ewan
“Material conservation is both crucial and challenging as we all know rewrapping pieces in acidfree [papers], wearing my conservation gloves. Some particular elements raise a particular challenge for conservation. In some cases I am receiving advice very kindly from the conservators at the V&A.” – Rose Frain
Artists work in a range of media, including organic material (fabric, foodstuffs, plants, seeds), water, large scale installation, film recordings in various formats, sound recordings, negatives, large transparencies, reclaimed timber, hard drives, emails, more.
Some mention freezing as a conservation approach, but for most artists, specialist archival boxes stored in the attic are a cost-effective solution for the short to medium-term.
“I feel very reluctant to make something very, very large if I don't know where it's going to go. I mean how much stuff can you keep on producing that is possibly going to end up in storage?” – Alison Wilding
Archiving without the artist
Artists archiving their own work requires dedication to the process whilst taking time out from their practice. However, a different challenge is archiving without the presence of the artist.
Artist Alistair MacLennan was very thorough in his archiving, with descriptions of all artworks. This allowed archivists working in Dundee, where his archive is held, to carry out archival work to his directions, without Alistair – who’s based in Belfast – present. However, this is not without challenges in interpretation, for example there being less clarity around research materials not described or categorised by the artist.
Alix MacSweeney, archiving the Peter de Francia estate found many more works than she knew about, and wondered what to do with all his art books so they pass on usefully.
“Having done all the cataloging or most of the cataloging there's still a lot of archiving to do and then what? I've got this house full, what should happen to this work next?” – Alix MacSweeney, Peter de Francia estate.
The future of artists archives
As we look ahead to the evolving role of artists’ archives, it’s clear they are more than just repositories of the past, they are dynamic tools for shaping how we engage with art, artists, and cultural legacy.
The work of initiatives like Art360 demonstrates how investment in archival practice can have lasting impact. As the John Latham estate reflects, “With the funds from Art360 we were able to work with a researcher who went through every document in the visual material, cataloging it and documenting it so for the future we will have this database of all of this material. The archive is vital for understanding the artist.”
Preserving and activating these archives ensures that future generations don’t just remember the work, they understand the context, process, and vision behind it. The future of artists’ archives is not only about safeguarding memory, but about making meaning possible.
