Thesaurus Scienta Lancastriae

Thesaurus Scienta Lancastriae is a collaborative art project between five year old Jack Aylward-Williams and his father, the artist Robert Williams. The project takes place at Lancaster's historically significant Williamson Park, a setting which contains a wide range of collecting contexts that reflect 19th century obsessions within science & culture. In celebration of the bicentenary of eminent Victorian scientist, and native Lancastrian Sir Richard Owen, the two explorers will engage in the activities of observing, collecting, measuring, sampling & testing according to Jack's priorities, between July 20th 2004 and July 20th 2005. The areas to be explored within the environments offered by the Park include geology & palaeontology, botany, biology, zoology, physics, chemistry, meteorology, astronomy, arboriculture, art, architecture, anthropology, and many, many others. Put simply, Jack will decide which aspects of his experiences in the Park to explore, the subsequent collections reflecting his formation of relationships between objects, and his descriptions of observed phenomena. Robert Williams' role in the project is to act as facilitator, curator & organiser of collections that Jack will generate. The interpretation, recording & presentation of this 'data' will help to form the collections as fanciful taxonomies & a recreation of the often arbitrary classification methods applicable to nineteenth century savants. These collections, together with a range of recording, display & reference devices and material, will be housed in a mobile garden shed. The shed as a container, references the conventional location for such interests as it is ironically applied to men, and as an acknowledgement for this as a dynamic that has shaped the cultural & scientific world since the nineteenth century.