Put Something in to Get Something Out was an interactive artwork that formed the centrepiece of my solo exhibition “About context: An exploration of Value in Four Parts” at The Gallery Premises, Johannesburg, November 2006. This exhibition showcased the works that I made during a three month residency in Melbourne in 2005-2006 (pictured below in the video installation), as well as the work Put Something in to Get Something Out. In this series of woks I became interested in notions of value and collecting. I noticed that, as collector I am drawn to similar sorts of objects: usually inexpensive quotidian objects that promise greatness, like zambuck- South African ointment that can cure anything, or objects bought from street sellers in Johannesburg. Also, when objects are part of a collection they acquire a new value as part of the collection. This new value can be thought of as another ‘social life’. I was interested in making an artwork about collecting, by amassing a collection of objects that I did not choose. The work “Put Something in to Get Something Out” was the means by which I collected objects. For the two weeks that the exhibition ran, gallery visitors were invited to swop objects with me in the exhibition space by taking any object they chose from my specially constructed boxes, as long as they replaced the object with something of theirs. Participants were asked to record the objects they chose, the reasons for their choice, as well as what they put in on the forms provided. I was left with an assortment of objects from rubbish like sweet wrappers, to trophies and trinkets, as well as a record of the exchanges made. Sometimes people exchanged objects with each other, so I did not see all the objects listed in the record of exchanges. At the end of the exhibition I photographed all the objects that I received and digitised all the handwritten records of exchanges.

I then tasked myself with making a new series of works from these objects. I exhibited these handwritten records along with the second series of works on the 2008 exhibition “Offerings”.