OOPARTs

OOPARTs is a collaborative art and community research project with artist Ben Hartley.

OOPARTs coordinates exhibitions, workshops, and research events about objects, how they act as vessels for the stories bestowed on them through folk tradition and shared playfulness, and their importance in the construction of heritage and identity. Using speculative futures and fictionalised Celtic artefacts, the project brings together imagined relics reinterpreted with scavenged things, demonstrating how these everyday objects and materials can become vessels for legend.

In Summer 2023 OOPARTs exhibited a sculpture collection in Elysium Gallery, Swansea and St. Anne's House, Bristol.

OOPARTs has been supported and made possible by Bristol City Council Originators' Fund, KIT FORM gallery, Elysium Gallery & St Anne's House.

In December 2024 OOPARTs facilitated Bog Idol; a two-week programme of art and storytelling at KIT FORM gallery, Bristol. Bog Idol used the image of the bog body to explore themes of Queer memory-making, artefact, organic archiving, and community stories.
Over the course of the programme members of the public were invited to add memories of Queer Bristol to a 'bog body' while local artists and performers were invited to present work, ideas, and research in the subjects.

Our contributing artists were Daniela Dyson, Luke Ridley, Ùna Blythe, Belladonna Paloma, and Ruby Taylor.

noun (plural: OOPARTs)
Abbreviation: ‘Out Of Place Artefacts’ 
Objects of historical, archaeological or cultural importance found in a location that challenges the established historical timeline. .