The archival materials were organized into an open storage along a timeline. This held materials from each of the nine performances including, props and costumes, the paper files representing management related and creative processes, audio visual documentation and printed matter by and about the company. Based on the long arc of almost twenty-three years (1987 - 2009) of creative work and through each of the company’s nine performances, the exhibition displays developed iteratively in sequence as a series of generative phases. These phases were punctuated further by a repeating pattern reflective of both the creative and pragmatic functions of the company. From the initial growth of each performance through its research and development, into a process of building scripting and editing materials into performance, alongside audio visual documentation of rehearsals and performances, to examples of the outreach and communications material that supported public presentations and touring. Finally, there were reflections and responses in the form of press announcements and reviews but also in examples of reflective writing by company members.

The exhibition proposed that, much like an encounter with Goat Island’s work itself, viewers could bring themselves to the exhibition as a way of exploring its meaning - they already have what they need to understand the work. The work of Goat Island was imagined in the exhibition as a series of informational chains. Taking in the detail of the Goat Island archive through each of the iterative displays, while concurrently engaging with freshly commissioned response works by other artists. The creativity and approaches of Goat Island were arguably as accessible in the 2019 exhibition as they were in the initial performances. To have been in the audience for a performance of Goat Island was to witness a series of material, visual and auditory prompts unfolding in real time. Presented in exhibition as a sequence of poetic metaphors this contemporary audience was invited to read the work from their place in the present, rather than as an historical artifact. Like lived experiences of all kinds this might have felt equally both familiar and strange.