The project examines how institutional systems describe value, through the medium of bookwork. The project documents lost objects that failed to sell at public auctions and view these auction houses as a temporary archive for the lost objects. As these possessions move through institutional systems, they transform from personal belongings into appraised property and sellable assets. Originally these objects were given to the auction house from other institutions, in particular: Transport for London’s lost property, Airport lost and found and Police auctions.

These items are deemed worthless by market logic but still described as irreplaceable by people and their memories. By collecting the photographs of these rejected objects from the auction houses catalogues and pairing them with testimony of individuals who have lost similar items, the work aims to show the contrast between institutional value or appraisal and personal significance. The catalogue format in itself creates a sense of irony, creating a professional catalogue and viewing box for objects that the market has already rejected.

At the auction house all the different systems converge, here all objects become random lot numbers and they all face the same judgement: sold or unsold. The auction house is the floor where all institutional processing ends. The backstory of the objects is irrelevant to the market valuation and the auction houses act as a great equaliser, everything becomes commodity. By bringing objects from multiple institutions: TFL, police auction, etc together - the project questions how diverse apparatus all converge on the same question : What has value? And by bringing them to their final destination these institutions have decided that these objects do not.

The work exists as a box containing a museum quality catalogue, archival drawers containing photographic evidence and a viewing box where the image can be removed and placed for viewing. The image is framed by the context of the surface it is viewed upon. This multi component structure critically refuses traditional bookmaking conventions, questioning what constitutes a book. By creating a boxed edition with multiple access points the project refuses singular, linear narrative structures, and questions the dominance of codex form in a book. The box doesn't just contain, it is the work. One experiences the archival display while simultaneously performing it.