On display for the first time as part of our permanent Collection, these pieces offer fresh perspectives on the Foundling story, exploring care for children, memory, identity and belonging.
Rachel Kneebone’s ceramic sculpture Through a Glass III, 2023 was originally part of the exhibition Self Made: Reshaping Identities and Tamsin van Essen’s Entangled Roots, 2023 was commissioned for the exhibition Finding Family.
Entangled Roots by Tamsin van Essen
Where do our roots begin and end? With the scientific certainty of DNA or the less predictable encounters we have with people and places over the course of our lives? Tamsin van Essen’s ceramic works explore notions of beauty and impermanence through examining scientific, medical and social historic themes. This new work interweaves the formal structure of a genetic family tree with extended blood lines and social threads to form an ever more complex and entangled network of both biological and coincidental human interactions. The porcelain discs, representing individuals’ genetic inheritance and relationships, resemble the ‘tokens’ in the Foundling Museum’s collection – these small objects were left as a means of identification when children were brought to the Foundling Hospital
