Objects in Waiting (2006) was an exhibition at the End Gallery (Sheffield), curated by Penny Whitehead and Tom Newell.
Over 150 artists were invited to contribute any artefact that they had been hanging on to with the intention of including it in an artwork. The aim of the exhibition was to explore how and why artists are inspired by things, by collecting together a range of objects that were 'waiting' to be used in some way.
I sent three Lomonosov porcelain blue-tits that had been sitting on my mantlepiece for six months.
The blue-tits were patiently waiting for me to decide how to include them in some work I planned to produce in response to a book I had read. The book was Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. At that point I really didn't know what to make, and the three birds had accidentally become proper ornaments that I was quite attached to. I decided that I needed to let them go and re-think the whole thing from a fresh perspective. The birds were sent away to Objects in Waiting, and have since found new homes within someone else's artistic output.