‘Catherine’s New Outfit
We were on our way to the Summer Fun Fair, after taking this photograph. I had just bought Catherine a new summer dress and took her photo because she felt very special dressed up to go to the fair.
Catherine had a lovely afternoon going on all the rides, her favourite being the tea cups, which she went on more than once.
We had almost run out of money, and we knew Catherine wouldn’t want to come home, so we bribed her with with an Ice Cream so she wouldn’t scream all the way home.
Hooray it worked!’
I am very excited to be exhibiting again at Turn The Page Artists Book Fair 2013, and will be developing my concepts of memory further in this years exhibition. Last year I exhibited a series of work where I drew personal memories in a line drawing into a gesso’ed surface that I covered in graphite and asked my parents to erase. By revealing the lined image this triggered a memory of their own that I typed up and bound into a book. Reading Susan Sontag’s book; ‘Theory of Photography’, I became interested in why we take photographs of ourselves as a proof of existence, a self-preservation of making an imprint on the world and not being forgotten.The idea was to portray my life in a series of snapshots but through someone else’s perspective to link back to the ‘theory of photography’ and showing my own fears of being forgotten and wanting to leave an imprint on the world.
In this years exhibition I will be creating a room installation, with Gesso memory drawings hung on the walls to represent photographs in a home. We take photographs to display in our homes, so I want to take my work into this original setting. These drawings will be representing my relationship to impermanence showing a self-preservation of making an imprint on the world and not being forgotten. I feel that there is a part of me that is not impermanent and by myself removing part of the surface it shows this fragility. There will be memory books propped up on a book shelf, that will include a memory from my parents and grandparents, with each book relating to a drawing on the wall, that will include written memories triggered by the image.
The memory drawings are created by working from an existing photograph, but I haven’t included myself in the drawings. I want to leave them open to interpretation by the audience as if it could be their own memories, I will provide a chair to encourage the audience into the room space to sit down and read the memory books while taking in the drawings. The audience completes the work and concept by coming into the space and projecting their own imagination into what could be happening in the memory drawings, which provokes their own relationship to memory and impermanence.
TTP13 will be happening on the 3rd and 4th May at the Forum in Norwich, I hope to see you there.
