The body of artworks exhibited on Offerings (2008), at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg was made in response to the objects that I received from participants in my previous interactive artwork Put something in to get something out (PSITTSO), in which I invited audience members to swop objects with me the gallery for the duration of the exhibition. I asked participants to record what they put in the swopping stations, what they took and the reasons for the choices they made. When PSITTSO ended I was left with a collection of objects and a record of transactions.

For my next exhibition, I photographed all the objects that I collected, and made digital prints of the written records. These formed an installation of over 400 digital prints, which were exhibited in the main exhibition space on Offerings. Coloured blocks were painted behind the prints, so that the connections between objects could be traced.

I then made a series of artworks using the objects in my collection as materials or catalysts for artworks. This series was conceived of as a dialogic response to the participants who traded objects with me. I let myself respond in different ways. Sometimes it was a phrase that moved me, as was the case with the work titled Someplace I’d rather be, which someone had written as a reason for taking a postcard. At other times the object was used to make a work, as was the case with the work Threads a video piece made with thread and bobbins left me. I also made works in response to objects, without directly including the objects. This was the case with one of the most banal objects that I received, an expired parking ticket that was folded in the shape of a paper plane that inspired the “Wishful thinking series”. At the end of the exhibition I sent the works and the objects for an exhibition at the Kwazulu-Natal Association for the Arts Gallery in Durban. Audience members were invited to swop objects that had come from Johannesburg gallery visitors. The KZNSA Gallery sent the objects that were collected during the exhibition run to me individually wrapped in white tissue paper. I photographed all of them, and have not yet opened them.

For example, the image of the paper aeroplanes used in Taking Flight was inspired by a used parking ticket that was folded into an aeroplane. A phrase written on the record of transactions inspired ‘Some place I’d like to be’.