Post-Folk Archive Wales

Vladimir Arkhipov’s project Post-Folk Archive is an extraordinary collection of home-made functional objects, each embodying a kind of do-it-yourself ingenuity. They are often inspired by lack of ready access to manufactured goods or by the need to make something adapted to a particular task or situation. After years of collecting such objects around his native Russia, Arkhipov was invited to do the same in the West Midlands. From gardens, allotments, garages and kitchens around Shropshire and elsewhere, he assembled an array of home-made inventions including a yeast skimmer, a square-root calculator and a light aircraft anchor, which were shown in an exhibition at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, in summer 2002.

The artist then travelled from Moscow to Llandudno in May 2003 to collect objects in north Wales. The intention was to collect ten or a dozen things to add to the forty or so from the Birmingham exhibition, and to show them all together at Oriel Mostyn. However a nine-day search around farmyards, sheds and gardens from Corwen to Caernarfon produced over sixty objects and inventions, making enough to form an exhibition in their own right.