Honesty Box
Medium
Keywords
Honesty Box is an installation work commissioned for the Gathering exhibition by Jonathan Michael Ray and Verity Birt. The exhibition Gathering reflects a communal act of intimacy shared between people, site, and materials. Local artists will respond to this theme through interdisciplinary practice to explore the act of gathering and its value in the aftermath of the pandemic. Inspired by honesty boxes in rural Cornwall, the work queers these objects into imagined queer emergency spaces.
The work is an interactive installation in which the audience can use and purchase objects from the sculptural system. Reframing the honesty box as a site of exchange, care, and informal economy, the installation considers how value, trust, and community are constructed. It positions transaction as a relational act, shaped by proximity, touch, and participation, offering a space where everyday rural practice intersects with queer strategies of survival and belonging.