The Loss of Memory

After visiting Frieze last year I went to Fitzroy Square to see Tracey Emin's work The Vanishing Lake.  A site specific installation displayed in a magnificent Georgian House and ran from 6th October - 12 th November 2011.

She looked into the mirror...
I made a fool of myself again.  A fool like a stupid child.  A child that has never known love...A sould that has never been touched.  Then she began to cry.
Knowing that everything is as it should be...
She was a fool.

It was all too late...The lake had gone...

The vanishing lake is not a metaphor...It is a real lake...it is small and magical looking...but only exists from autumn to spring...in the summer...it is just a dry barren bowl...
The only metaphor is often...This is how I feel.'

An extract from 'The Vanishing Lake'
Tracey Emin Autumn 2011

I don't know if it was the green paint on the walls or the location but this exhibition has been the highlight of my year so far.  Monoprints on cloth, past reminders of Emin's feelings displayed above large fireplaces and in small glass boxes.  There is something about the display that exposes Emin's more vulnerable side.

Last Great words 2011 8 1/4 x 11 11/16 in. (21 x 29.7 cm) Monoprint on paper

As I left the exhibition and walked around the corner there was bloody footprints and splashes of blood on the pavement.

I tried to find out what had happened but nothing had been reported - I did however find out that the actor Nick Moran was stabbed there a number of years before.
It made me think about the fragility of life and connecting these photographs to the sound of a fight I had recorded on a night out in Bath.

Screenshot from walk

I recorded the eight minute walk home on a normal camera not realising until I watched it back there were things happening that I don't remember.  After this I began to look a little closer at what I was doing.  These videos are out of my control and even though I am making them by pressing the record button, I cannot control events around me.  It is this randomness that I like.

I extracted the sound of the arguement and used the sound software on my mac to have a visual of what the words were like.

The words are 'calm down, calm down, calm down'

All the lost things

After looking at my Creative project and the pieces I have made for it I spend the other half of my time collecting and cataloguing.  From pictures that I take and storing them in folders to video clips of places I visit.  I capture elements often overlooked and play them back listening for the small things.  When I first visited Tyneham my thoughts turned to the army presence there and how I could incorporate this into my work as an artist.

Worbarrow Tout

This view from Warbarrow Bay shows the targets on the hill, I originally thought they were targets for the tanks but later found out they are markers to show the tanks the way back.  I thought I could aim big and use the hill for a sculptural piece, somehow using light and shining it out to sea when the tanks weren't firing......but I'll see what happens.

I have been looking at the work of Michele Whiting who works in specific geographical sites.

http://www.michelewhiting.com/

She says:

'I work in an investigative way, pursuing the subject of the work at different levels; this often leads me to work across media, although my primary medium tends towards moving image. My interests stem from living and working in a rural environment and my current research began in 2005 with the intention of investigating how and in what ways specific geographic site can be utilised as subject in moving image installation. My aim has been to achieve this through a synthesis of differing research strands, which would encompass moving image installation and theoretical, contextual and technical investigations. Within my practice, I use my lens as a broad language of gesture, which maps, color, form and movement as a way to reveal perceptual change, a phenomenological attempt at deconstructing the experience of place, not to show mimetically or critically the distribution of things in space but how experience of place may be reclaimed as encounter by the viewer.'

I have also been looking at:
Quinn Latimer
Angus Lysaczenko - Diminishing Returns
Ava Merjian
Kathe Kollwitz
John Makepeace

What we remember, what we forget.....

It has now been ten days since the exhibition started.  I've had the private view and visited inbetween.  Looking back it seems like such a long time ago now and most of the pieces are still intact after so long.  Just like when I first visited Tyneham, the mist clung to the valley, but the weather was much worse.  Cold and windy, with drizzly rain blowing across from the hills.

When the time came to take everything down it was like saying goodbye to an old friend.  I know that I'll be back one day, but I will look on Tyneham through different eyes, as a visitor once again.

The damp penetrates and changes, ink runs like tears and life goes on...

'For Him'

I like that things have been moved, that the wind folds and changes what I set out to do.

'No Welcome Home'

Edges folded as once more shoes walk the floor

Memories never fade if a story is retold....

'Yesterday's Paper'

Propped against the wall but not yesterday's news.

Clay pieces from Toil that turned back to dust.

Missing or broken pieces; a peg, a key, the Surrender flag pole snapped and some very wet paper, although the wax did a good job.

The best part was reading all the comments in the visitor book. Knowing that people enjoyed the exhibition and quietly understood what I was trying to achieve made all the late nights worth it..........

.....and Emma, thank you for the stories that took me down Dorset's narrow roads, to a place I can't forget and memories I'll treasure always.....keep planting the seeds that make people grow.

Fragments

Today I returned to Tyneham for the first time since the private view.  I didn't know what to expect or what I'd find.  When I approached the village I could still see George's Smock hanging in Gardeners Cottage so that came as a relief.  But the piece In Flowerless Hours is no more.  I suppose it is quite poignant that these fragile flowers, coated in porcelain, wouldn't last forever.  They were wet and trodden on, their petals crushed into the ground, with one lone flower holding it's shape, I picked it and put in my bag.  I decided to take this display down, the ink on the sign had bled so no longer described the work.  Somehow this added to the significance of change and decay.  So, far from being sad I knew that displaying my work in an outdoor isolated place, some would not survive.

The Epistle is another piece that has changed since Saturday.  The envelope that was once part of the work lies in the mud on the floor of the Post Office.  This change is not bad.  It had a significant affect on my feelings seeing it lying there.  I picked it up and put it back in the letterbox along with the wax and fabric letter which had also deteriorated.  The wording of the letter can no longer be read, ink combining with the dye.  The wax has worn away where countless visitors have touched it and again the notion of this doesn't fill me with sadness.  It looks as though at some point the letter had become detached completely and someone has tied it back up, taking care over it, understanding what it means.

Toil

Touched and crumbling, the pieces will now go back to the Earth from where they first came.

The remaining pieces were intact just a little wet, by Monday things may have changed further.  It's out of my hands and I'll just have to wait and see.  This poem I think is quite fitting.....

Informational Decay

I heard an echo in a hollow place.

No sound of blowing wind or drifting sand,

some ancient voice was this, a captive trace

of gone-by speech, of argument, demand,

of plea or question, comfort or command.

Long years this message had remained unheard

in empty halls, in untenanted lands,

a letter lost, a homeless, wandering word.

I could not judge it solemn or absurd,

the language, one I'd never learned to speak.

Was it then call of beast or cry of bird

from whiskered mouth, or brightly colored beak?

No. No, this was human speech, now lost.

A warning wasted, at an unknown cost.

Tiel Aisha Ansari

Reflection.........

Everything in place

In Flowerless Hours

Surrender (detail)

Surrender

Toil

Epistle

Lost Forever

Lost Forever (detail)

Recollection

To Keep Men Free

Phyllis' Dress, Tear, Tear, Homesick

Homesick (detail)

Yesterday's Paper

Home

Tea and Sympathy

No Welcome Home

For Him

George's Smock

Detail with hand made Dorset buttons

Recollection - The private view, which was also open to the public....

A few pictures of the private view, the weather stayed dry....no matter how hard you work that cannot be planned :)

Tyneham is isolated but that didn't put people off travelling specially to see the exhibition. Old friends met and families gathered; ultimately that's what it's been about for me. The story of what happened touches people just like it did me. I have created these pieces in response to a village I had never heard of before last summer.......now the people who called it home have their memory stitched into the fabric of time for the story to be retold to future generations through recollection.