Anthology of Memory
Anthology of Memory continues an exploration of connections between the landscape and memory and how the colours and textures of place can hold, heal and hinder memory. The exhibition consists of two large-scale installations, distinct but connected.
memory’s shroud
The large multi-vessel installation entitled memory’s shroud, draws on the ceramic vessel as symbolic of the body’s memory of experiences within a landscape context. Rachel North utilises repetition of non-figurative forms to reference a shrouded body, an abstraction of the artist’s memories within various landscapes experienced throughout her childhood. The key forms, whilst similar in their base shape, vary in the clay body, size, application of texture, glaze and firing atmosphere - North’s deliberate manipulation of the surface communicating the memory triggers of those landscapes through the senses. The viewer is invited to consider how memories of experiences are shaped and held by the landscapes in which they were formed.
an anthology of memory
lingering
in the forgetting
The artwork, an anthology of memory / lingering / in the forgetting draws on natural fibres and colour to communicate lived experiences of a child within a landscape marred by trauma. The landscape sits above - the aerial perspective of an omniscient narrator drawing on the threads of memories. Use of repeated threads, colours and textures recall the landscape and the fractured memories of the landscape. Threads extend from the landscape, working within the ebbs and flows of memory subjected to a child’s recollection and the ravages of time. Varying weights of natural and earth pigmented beeswax emphasise the contrasting temporality of certain memories, some inseparable from the landscape in which they were formed.
