A museum of the present for the University of Waterloo

Depot is Graphic Standards’ project for the University of Waterloo’s Render programme. For three months in 2009, Render’s gallery space will be temporarily converted into a self-storage facility housing objects and artifacts belonging to 50 University of Waterloo co-op students.

Each of Depot’s participating students will be issued a standard shipping pallet upon which to assemble their possessions. The pallets—loaded with things not needed or wanted while the students are in other cities on work terms—will be shrink-wrapped and stored within the gallery space. All wrapped pallets will be available for public viewing by gallery-goers as hybrid “readymades” existing somewhere between works of art and collected anthropological specimens.

Render’s office and gallery space—located at the edge of the University of Waterloo campus in a single story, steel-frame building—has never been an architectural wonder. Formerly used to store surplus university furniture and classroom materials, it still boasts utility rather than beauty. Through a profoundly pedestrian act, Depot will temporarily revert the building’s gallery space back into a storage facility, providing a service for students and, in the process, engage the politics and economics of keeping.

Each of Depot's participating self-storers are seen as project collaborators who will work with gallery staff to inventory their personal “collections” and prepare their objects for safe-keeping. A central database providing provenance information and commentary on the stored objects may at any time be viewed by the public and updated by Depot participants through an online StuffTracker.

Depot is Graphic Standards’ project for the University of Waterloo’s Render research and curatorial program, headed up by Andrew Hunter.