Creating artwork posted through 10,000 doors in Blackburn, artist Ames Pennington explores the manufacturing journey of an unassuming everyday object – the envelope.
Asking the audience to look out for the makers’ initials printed on the envelopes, Ames encouraged a dialogue between strangers, from the ‘returner to the sender’. Taking inspiration from the manufacturer who produces 2.2 billion envelopes a year, Ames’s residency explored themes of work with the community of Blackburn.
Ames used the envelopes to develop a large-scale installation, covering the walls of the Church Street gallery space. They also produced a film that posed questions to the factory workers, exploring the theme of ‘work’, to reveal the perspectives of the machinists, making visible the individual stories and intimate details behind the production of a mass-produced object.
I’m absolutely amazed by what goes into making envelopes on this scale – the engineering is something else. – Ames Pennington
We are a sleeping giant that not enough people know about. It will hopefully highlight manufacturing as a career opportunity, letting people know it’s not a dying industry. – Mark Sears, Heritage Envelopes
The Artist
Artist Ames Pennington (they/he) makes people the core part of their practice. Often using such mediums as performance, drawing, film, events and conversations, they work with accessible materials such as cardboard to bridge high and low art, while also having turned walls, shops and arcade machines into socially-engaged artworks. Ames’s residencies and social and public commissions have included works with Left Coast, Studio Voltaire, METAL and Heart of Glass.
The Manufacturer
Producing 50 million envelopes a week from their Blackburn factory, Heritage Envelopes is part of a global brand operating across 50 sites in 23 countries. Specialists in printed envelopes for business as well as retail stock for high street stores and people’s personal letters, the company is an undetectable presence in many households every day and offers a rich vein of inspiration to their artist collaborator.
