We Are Our Memories (2023)
Installation photo: 'We Are Our Memories' (2023) Acrylic and ink on canvas, red wall paint, horse brass and 4-channel sound installation.
'We Are Our Memories' is an installation first created for the Camberwell College of Art MA Fine Art Degree show. Combining painting, print, found objects and sound, the installation creates an environment that uses my family archive as a foundation to explore ideas around memory, history and identity. Paintings from family photographs are built up in washes and layers that reveal and obscure features, referencing death masks and the role of portrait painting in ancestral memorial; inherited horse brasses speak of the traces that are carried within material objects whilst fragmented audio recordings of family memories and myths suggest that our identities are created from a complex and fragmented combination of stories, photographs, genetics and folklore.
Installation photo: 'We Are Our Memories' (2023) Acrylic and ink on canvas, red wall paint, horse brass and 4-channel sound installation.
Thinking of reading and archive rooms, I designed a space separated from the rest of the exhibition and the red interior creates a sense of enclosure and intimacy. Within the room, an immersive, 4 channel sound installation allowed the audience to explore the space, physically moving through areas of audibility, giving each oral history and portrait its own separate moment of contemplation.
Above (l&r): 'We Are Our Memories' (2023) Acrylic and ink on canvas, red wall paint, horse brass and 4-channel sound installation installed at Camberwell College of Art (UAL), London
