Jean Richardson: Every Now And Then I Fall Apart

In Every Now and Then I Fall Apart, Jean Richardson uses her experience as a dual citizen of the UK and the US—while mostly identifying as being Scottish—to explore the dichotomy of displacement and belonging within her work.

Influenced and inspired by her experiences living in different climates and cultures, Richardson makes collections of ordinary objects, which she finds trigger memory and ignite a sense of comfort and wonder. The objects are carefully chosen both for their arbitrary meaning and their personal significance. Richardson reclaims the objects into sculptures and installations that become a poetic metaphor for the longing to find the familiar within the unfamiliar while simultaneously seeking out the unfamiliar to detach from the familiar. Richardson’s work is a direct response to her relationship to place and the conflict of feeling both lost and found.

With Every Now and Then I Fall Apart, Richardson employs irony to examine how the universal and personal feeling of displacement can at once create confusion and comfort, anxiety and apathy, and emptiness and curiosity.