Call for images relating to Mapping Memory in response to the British Art Show in Leeds this October. Images will be presented as a postcard exhibition for audiences to collect from throughout the 3-month duration of the British Art Show.

The Imaginary Museum has been produced in response to the tradition of artists and theorists interrogating the museum archive format to investigate and expose the politics of collection and display. In direct response to the theories of Andre Malraux, Walter Benjamin and Aby Warburg, the project aims to understand and communicate the ways that art history is made, and how artists engage with the collection and categorisation of art.

Directly referencing the work of André Malraux, in the first volume of 'The Psychology of Art' entitled 'The Museum without Walls', the concept of the project began with the idea of photographic reproduction in books as the basis for the democratisation of visual art. The project is a continuation of earlier versions of the concept, which were held at The Tetley, The Library Interventions Project at Leeds College of Art and Heritage Show and Tell at Leeds City Museum.

This iteration of The Imaginary Museum focuses on ideas of Mapping and Memory, in response to key themes from the British Art Show, which returns to Leeds this October. All kinds of photographic, image and screen-based practice will be considered from traditional and digital photography, photomontage and collage, documentation of objects and installation, and net-based artwork.

Themes could include networks of art history, as described in Warburg’s ‘Mnemosyne Atlas’, and the work of Gerhard Richter, through to memorial, psychogeography and other mapping practices. The ‘museum’, displayed on a postcard wall rack, will be a series of 18 postcard reproductions selected from an open call. The audience will be able to select from the postcards, in part or in whole, by leaving a suggested donation in a nearby honesty box. There will also be small branded envelopes for audiences to keep their selection in, thereby creating their own imaginary museum.

The postcard rack will be displayed at 42 New Briggate as part of a series of exhibitions alongside the wider British Art Show programme. Following the exhibition, each of the images and texts provided by the artists will be collected in the form of an artist’s book which will also include an essay about the exhibition. This will also be issued to the artists involved. Images and texts will also be featured on the project website.

To apply: Please provide a landscape format A6 JPG image, complete with the description that will feature on the back of the postcard. Images will be reproduced at A6 size. Please allow 2mm bleed around the image. For images from the previous Imaginary Museum project please visit: http://abcarchive.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-imaginary-museum.html