Tiny polished pieces of nature, shipped long distances to wait. Lying lazily on markets that look incredibly alike, eventually becoming someone’s pocket fortune or nightstand reassurance. Nelly-scented incense and Icelandic glacial water tapped on bottles with a cool sticker. 15 missed calls and they say eating blue smarties while wearing Crocs shoes causes immediate cancer. Ásgerður Birna Björnsdóttir is a visual artist busy with making sense of the abundance of materials around her.

Carolyn Clayton is an artist whose work seeks to cultivate an enhanced awareness of our shared lives with things. She has long been interested in the traces that human beings leave on material objects. Not only the observable scratches, smudges and smells that hint at past occurrences, but also the invisible and undetectable ones. She is enamored with how something as simple as touch can drastically shift an object’s perceived value, making it tainted or treasured (contaminated or cherished). This has positioned her to ask whether object history is retained in the fragments of everyday things, which she explores by interacting with, collecting, photographing, pulverizing and reassembling second-hand objects.