Inside Story with Humphrey

What is the Stuff of Life? What do we accumulate over the years, our collections, our memories, our relationships cluttered into cards, tickets, shells, bangles? Why did the artist Michael Landy destroy everything he owned in a dramatic 2001 exhibition called Break Down – 7,227 items in front of 45,000 fascinated people. With high and creative talent, Jane Dorner, give us her Stuff of Life – a personal story beautifully illustrated with more than 400 watercolours and descriptions what she collected and why, what she kept and how, and what we own tells about all of us. The average household holds a staggering 300,000 items. Jane unapologetically scatters family and friends across her pages.

The Stuff of Life is both deeply personal and deeply universal. In conversation with Humphrey Hawksley Jane will also talk about her work as an author, writer, editor and general publishing guru as well as her other watershed books A Life in 490 Recipes and The Egg and Card Book how she recorded each year, not in a diary, but by painting an egg in the spring and card in the winter. The eggs express the salient event of the year gone by and the cards take in paradox and puzzle. “It’s as if I am saying this is what happened but how does one interpret the significance?” explains Jane. For a real hidden gem of a Goldster Inside Story join Humphrey and Jane Dorner at 12.00 Thursday June 8th.