My work is a project, the Art From London Markets Project, a reflection of our relationship to food in London explored through art, image making, community interactive events, installations and blogging both as a record of the project and as part of my practice.
Looking back at the stories collected in Hammersmith last October, I am making works trying to distil the essence of the stories collected, each culminating in its own single iconic image.The current narrative I am working on was a double remembering, the pomegranate in the interactive art event evoked for the story teller another moment of remembering.
The pomegranate evoked the memory of her childhood self being transported. Transported by the glimpse of a pomegranate at the front of a greengrocers on a grey London street. Transported all the way back to the sunny Tunisian garden of her infancy.
This story is the story of the particular, a particular childhood that spanned Tunisia and the UK, but also the loss and longing that transience brings with it, a universal. The pomegranate in this image has a particular individual symbolism, but is also pregnant with diverse cultural symbolisms.
The copper gild I am using holds the place of the intense Tunisian sun. I will preserve its sheen with a shellac varnish, and it will change and play with the interaction of natural light here lightening and darkening through a day.
This story comes from a small collection from random people, people invited to story collection events through invitations handed out in markets, and social media reaching a random audience and there is a common theme in many of them, memories of other places: from Hong Kong, Jakarta, Tunisia, Liverpool, Israel, Romania, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Germany to Finchley, Liverpool and Highgate. This is London, international and culturally diverse.
Longing
The culture and population is constantly in a state of flux and change. The process of story collecting captures a small moment in time of the individual who shares the story, but also of who the city is in any particular place and a particular moment in time. These works are an attempt to take the time to notice and record who we are now.
In interpreting the pomegranate story I have to decide whether to represent the grey London street or not, this has aesthetic and conceptual considerations. For a while I play with the possibilities of bringing in the grey using a mini-me piece to look at the interplay of the colours: I made a small sketch with the broad colours and played with that so that I could make some decisions within the space of time offered by the gilding, a slow process requiring wait times to reach the perfect tack. I started by adding scratchy charcoal and leaving a light halo around the Tunisian sun. Then I added painting medium which gave a glossy intense shine, but it was so intense and in competition with the copper. I added white paint and took out the halo, played with the smoothness and tones of the grey lightening and then bring back in some dark tones.
And while I am doing all of this practical problem solving, I think back to the original storytelling and realise that the child had been transported back to the sunshine. If I am going to concentrate on the memory within the memory there should be no trace of grey.
I have also been in the process of putting together some proposals for Installations in public spaces which include a story sharing element where the installations provide a context which is not emotionally neutral, exploring themes that are prevalent in current discourse about food both in social media and more traditional media.
This work and others made from the stories collected in October will be shown at in Kensington and Fulham Open Art Spaces, Faron Sutaria, North End Road, Fulham. So in a nice circular way the works produced are going back to the geographic roots of where they were told. This show is open on the weekends of 24th to 26th June and 1st to 3rd July. If you come in on the Sunday 26th (10 am to 12) you can share your story with me and become part of the project.
