The impossibility of losing in the mind of someone winning

Winners are grinners, so the saying goes. And with victory comes the totems of achievements, the strangely heraldic forms of the trophy accompanied by the peculiarly telegraphic texts of engraved plaques. In trophies found in junk shops, Elvis Richardson discovers a trove of psychological and historical evocations. The accumulated horde of trophies is like the booty of Roman triumph. The recipients now represent an anonymous roll call of aspiration and achievement. Did these moments change or fulfil the lives of the winners? If so, why were the trophies abandoned? In a tribute to the fighting spirit of a lost nation of competitors, Richardson constructs an honour roll of her own. The trophy may signal the completion of a contest but Richardson focuses on the aspiration that drives the competitors; each of them wants to scale the mountain and take the prize, each of them knows that a trophy represents a title that must be fought for again next season.