Janet McEwan

Notes to Self, 2007

Janet McEwan’s cards are
mementos for the future. The
keepsakes are simple, prosaic
objects, like shells collected
from a beach, marked with a few
lines of poetry. But the artist
does not keep them - she sends
them away, risking them being
lost in the postal service.
This process mirrors the
function of our memory - sending
the incomprehensible away for
processing at a later stage, and
using the simplest of shapes as
index entries for a larger whole.
“I posted these ‘cards’ to myself
while travelling on my own in
the North East of Scotland where
I had lived for 15 years before
moving south. I felt dislocated
in many arenas of my life and
sending the objects/cards to
myself was a reassuring ritual:
a way of trying to make sense of
the place I had found myself in.
“Externalising my own feelings,
I wondered if they would be
lost in transit, rejected as
unsuitable, and was surprised
when I returned that like
me, they arrived at their
destination in one piece.”
McEwan’s work uses the
landscape and heritage of
her environment as source
material, often using stone and
found materials. She currently
lives and works in Cornwall;
the cards represent a bridge
between her past and present
locations, abstracting the
physical and temporal distance.