The Artist as Collector

Artists collect things that inspire, fascinate or bewitch them. The Barbican exhibition 'Magnificent Obsessions' has chosen the most obvious artists possible (more or less) to propose the importance of the artist as collector...
The exhibition and book 'Deep Storage' by Ingrid Schaffner & Matthias Winzen has clearly been an important reference point for the curator of the Barbican show.
 'Deep Storage' (1998) looked at collecting, archiving and storage in artists' practice - as a contemporary artistic strategy. The process of storing is always one of mirroring and self-evaluation. Whether that self be a cultural body - like a museum or other public collection or a squirrel-ish individual, or Citizen Kane, ‘you are what you keep.’

Here's some images from the Magnificent Obsessions show: