Proposal for a Warehouse or Towards a Museum of Reorganisation by James N Hutchinson addressed the transformation of objects as they move through spaces, carried by the flow of capitalism, and considered how the spaces they move through are themselves transformed to accommodate the flow.

The project took the form of a number of shipping crates, each produced in a location where a rapid economic transformation was taking place (or had taken) place; a transformation requiring coercive reorganisation at great human or social cost. The crates were made with materials sourced locally (or materials with local significance) and with the help of people who lived in the locations in question. Each crate was designed so that, when padded on the inside, it could in principle be used to safely transport Robert Morris' 1961 work Box with the Sound of its own Making. Locations for the production of previous crates included Fordlandia, Brazil and Colbost, Skye. Two of the crates that were shown in Collective were specially created for How to Turn the World by Hand: one by James himself in Istanbul and one by Wang Youcheng in Beijing.

James N Hutchinson was born in Southport and received his BA(Hons) in Fine Art from Leeds Metropolitan University in 2000 and his MFA from Glasgow School of Art in 2011. Prior to moving to Glasgow, he was co-Director of the self-initiated curatorial practice The Salford Restoration Office, an organisation established in 2006 to explore and critique the visual arts infrastructure of Manchester. Artists that they worked with included Artur Zmijewski, Katya Sander and Jeremy Deller. He lives and works in Glasgow.

Read the How to Turn the World by Hand publication here

How to Turn the World by Hand was a year-long international research project between Collective, Edinburgh, PiST///, Istanbul and Arrow Factory, Beijing. It involved a three phase project including an exhibition exchange, events and a discussion programme investigating trade. How to Turn the World by Hand also included exhibitions by Fiona Jardine, Sun Xun and James N Hutchinson at Collective.