Every cuppa is a diary note for art student who collects teabags
It might not be everybody's cup of tea.
But a Portsmouth University PhD arts student has brewed up an extraordinary exhibition made up of used teabags.
South African-born Patti Gaal-Holmes uses the bags as a kind of diary to record the highs and lows of the past 11 years, since she was introduced to the brew by English pals.
And she now has around 32,000 bags within her collection - she is unsure of the exact total - which she stuffs inside suitcases.
The unusual collection documents the past 11 years of her life.
'I love drinking tea and I save the teabags because it's a way of marking the days - it's better than a diary,' the 44-year-old said.
'But it's more of a project I'm working on as an artist, and it's a bit more than just putting all these teabags into a suitcase because I can't let go of them.'
She has, in fact, put one of the suitcases on display in the Space gallery within the university's Eldon Building on Winston Churchill Avenue.
It's the artistic result of years of perfecting her tea-related logging technique over the past 11 years.
First, she has her cuppa then dabs the used bag on some paper.
She then numbers the bag and sometimes notes down who she drank the tea with and anything interesting they discussed.
Then she dries the tea bag in the sunshine or on a radiator before storing it in one of her three large suitcases.
'They do smell a bit but I find it quite comforting,' she said.
'Sometimes friends think it's a bit weird or eccentric and my kids just say, "It's mum and her tea",' said Patti, who studies within the School of Creative Arts, Film and Media.
She even fishes teabags out of the bin to put in a special box she carries if she is enjoying a cup with a friend who is unaware of her hobby.
Ms Gaal-Holmes, of Elm Grove, said she sees tea-drinking as a ritual and usually drinks between six and 10 cups a day.
'Sometimes at night I can't wait to get up in the morning because I am so looking forward to that first cup of tea,' she said.
'I like good strong tea with milk - like English Breakfast or Assam and occasionally Earl Grey.
'Ideally I will make it in a pot, have it in my special cup and dip chocolate in it.'
Ms Gaal-Holmes hopes to make a trip to Sri Lanka to work on a tea plantation there, and investigate more fully the history of tea, with its colonial ties to Britain.
'Its history is really quite bloody, because of the colonial links,' she added.
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Friday 25 May 2012
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