Bodies of work
Letters To
This is a book work (and a few prints) which use Franz Kafka's Letter to his Father as a starting point, using text and images together. These images are centered around our own understanding of what constitutes place, physically and emotionally where we fit into the world. This perception of where we should be is coloured by emotion, and the memories attached to both where we are, and where we wish to be or not be. Letters to grew out of this discrepancy between memories of places, and changes to the nature of the space, seeking comfort in memory. Letters to also came from the woven nail sculpture I have been working on—something at once both comforting, and disquieting; in a way, the repetition of the work involved in creating such a piece, of the repeating nails, is itself an escape from.
Kafka's Letter to his Father is written about his home and childhood, and the unhappiness recalled there in the relationship with his father. The images taken from the sculptures grew into a dialog between the text and the nails to create more sculptur oriented work. The images are grittier, and the text deteriorates—Kafka's work, and mine, is about real people, rather than any kind of perfection.
Of Home
Our understanding of what constitutes place is coloured by emotion, and the memories attached to it. For this reason, a building, or a place, will persist in consciousness long after its physical counterpart has eased to exist. Place is as much a construct of the mind as it is a physical manifestation. The structures in which we live and work, and in which our experiences and feelings take place become imbed in our psyches, and establish a lasting impression. Memory is not the same as this; with memory, we can be subjective, or remember things that happened imperfectly. We weight memories with relevance and priority; they become nebulous and flexible. Memory is more a hybridization of experience and imagination. But conversely, the effect of memory upon our concept of place is far less mutable.
When I started this series of work, my intention was to venture beyond a more photographic representation; to work in a way that echoed the visceral nature of the concept of place, without defining a specific space. It seemed logical to me that the act of drawing, and the potential of the mark would accomplish that. Drawing the nest form was both an act of creating ambiguity and clarity, much like the clarity of the structure and the intangibility of memory and emotion.
The symbolic nature of the nest leads the viewer to an understanding of place, or shelter. At the same time, because of its indistinct nature it is an invitation to a more nuanced interpretation as the structure of the nest becomes distorted, and is pulled apart and examined. The goal is to allow the viewer to access feeling and emotion that emanates from the non-physical nature of place.
Often, there is conflict between the incorporeal and physical natures of place. We discover that our memories of it are subjective, and that our experience is dynamic; what we remember is either flawed, or, because of the nature of time and experiences, things have simply changed. For example, 'home' is a word charged with meaning. It transcends its physical nature and the time we spent in or at home influences the meaning of the word in a substantive, individual and subjective way. Home, as a concept, invokes so many other impressions (including childhood, family, friends, and shelter). It is a completely different experience for everyone. Experience changes as the conditions that originally informed the concept change. The movement, change and loss of people affect the perception of home in a marked way that can range from positive to negative. My recent work looks at the transformation of home. At times a comforting place, at times outgrown, or a dead house, missing those elements that made a house a home, the recent work examines this push pull between the relationship of the individual to the space of an imagined, metaphorical place. Memory and the physical spaces we inhabit create the place; as a nurturing shelter, or as something to escape.
Changing echos
Memory is subjective—it is affected by who is viewing, and in how we remember. It is intangible, and therefore changeable. Memory is subject to how each individual or mechanical representation captures a particular point in time, generating an echo of the original event—a memory. These exist only in the mind, but in some ways we also attach them to particular objects—a scent, or a keepsake that has personal meaning. This echo is what intrigues me at present. Because I am a printmaker and a photographer, I have been using the camera as an alternate means of recording objects and as a drawing tool. Some drawings have been informed by photos, while others are informed by recollection alone. The camera records an ephemeral truth of the photographic word, but does not see things the way the human eye does. I feel further manipulation of the plate is necessary rather than printing the photos simply as they are. By working further into the plate I hope to allow them to show a deeper truth. Using the process of sugar lift transfers as a starting point, I've then been drawing back into the plate with aquatint, hardground and spit bite, and reworking the plate to etch the images. In this way they become a step removed, and allow a new perspective. The photos are transformed by the printmaking processes, becoming something more than the original image, as they are translated step by step.
The images I am currently working with are less about the original found object that was photographed than about the echoes of its presence felt within the image. I have been working with how the camera and myself generate these remembered images differently, using photos as a starting point and then drawing back into them and bringing my own hand into the image, reworking the plate and allowing the image to grow. I have also begun creating objects to be photographed, based on memories of other objects no longer present, or no longer whole. There is a thin barrier between the object and the viewer, obscuring the original object further and differentiating inner, outer, and personal spaces. I want to make the viewer simultaneously feel the presence of an object beyond their view, and to feel that sense of presence as well as understand that it is there, though there may be no immediate access to it. I don't believe that the knowledge of what is being shown explicitly is necessary—it is enough to feel that this presence is, or was, once there.
Blow up
A series of explorations into the strangeness of the everyday. At a certain point, the known becomes unknown as you go closer to the object, and discover worlds unseen by the unaided eye.
Inner landscape
'Inner landscape' is an introspective on an internal sense of memory, and of memory loss, from both a personal and a more distanced, scientific viewpoint. The physical structure of nerve cells and the intangible information they possess are very different, and it is astonishing that such small changed can mean so much. I placed a particular emphasis on personal memory of my Grampa, drawing from older photos and my own experiences.
During the course of the work focus shifted form a more scientific, distanced representation to looking more closely at synapses, the spaces between nerve cells which allows for communication of memory and information between cells in the form of neurotransmitters. Even if the information in a single nerve cell remains intact, without a viable connection the information is as good as lost, and I wanted to explore the fragility and the power of such a tiny connection.
I wanted to take my interpretation of memory in the form of drawings, and portraits, and move to juxtapose that intangible information with the near invisible chemical reactions that happen inside and between brain cells. I hoped, that by showing that connection one could also infer what might happen were that connection gone. In some ways, it is a personal attempt to understand Dementia better, and to remind myself that even if others are now missing those memories, or they are gone, memories remain present in photographs, and in other people.
Explorations
Individual explorations, and works, that do not fit into any particular larger body of work.
Figuration
Different interpretations of the human figure over several years. This includes works done from observation, and works inspired by the figure.
