After an incredibly busy and tiring two weeks my vision has finally been realised!
When I stand in the space and take it all in I am hugely proud of what I have been able to achieve within this degree project. As an artist who has only ever dappled in installation based work in the past, I cannot believe this is the end product.
I have had help along the way in creating Everything I Do Not Remember with the staircase and wallpaper specifically, but I do feel a great sense of achievement after the amount of work I have put into this installation and how much I have been able to do myself. I feel I have definitely pushed the boundaries on what I ever thought I could achieve and the amount of courage needed to try something so different at the most critical point of my Fine Art degree.
As mentioned in previous posts, I have had my doubts over the past few weeks in regards to how to create an effective space. I have commented already upon how the installation has been based largely around my dry point etching prints and so it wasn’t until I had these in place on the wall that everything felt right.
I think the etchings on anaglypta work really well in the frames which contextualise the photographic element definitively. I always knew that I wanted the composition on the wall to be one of slight disorganisation to once again communicate the complexity of memory and one’s ability to recall past events efficiently. I did expect the frames to take up more space than they did, although this is a small issue. I still believe the significance of the number 22 is more integral to my project.
In a conversation with my tutor, the question was posed whether I was to hang anything upon my coat stand. This is something I have been quietly mulling over as I progressed with my installation. I think it had to wait right till the end to see the overall effect to be able to determine if this is what the space needed. I decided to place an old coat and a spare belt from a coat upon the stand which I think emphasizes a homey feel. I also believe it creates a greater interest within the space as the viewer contemplates the prints on the wall and begins to build a relationship between the images and objects in the space.
Upon the small table resides a rotary dial telephone and one of my framed prints. It was a spontaneous decision to place one of the prints on the table and once it was there it just seemed to work. The particular print I have chosen to be displayed in this manner is of me on my first day of primary school. This pinpoints the significance of my education now coming to an end after 18 and a half years as well as emphasizing my own presence within the piece.
I also made quite a quick, but what I feel to be a rather signficant, decision when it came to the telephone. When placing it upon the table I decided to leave the phone off the hook. At the time I didn’t quite know why, it just seemed to fit. As I contemplate this action in greater depth, however, my ever analytical self has come to a much more conceptual and complex conclusion.
I feel having the phone off the hook symbolizes an ongoing conversation, the one each and every one of us has with our memories. It acknowledges an absence and a presence all at once and the potential for a connection with something or someone we are not even sure is there anymore.
This concept is, I think, heightened by my choice in title, Everything I Do Not Remember. In essence a large part of my installation is actually based upon what I do remember from my childhood.
What I wish to convey with this title is the doubt, the uncertainty, the vulnerability of these memories. The distress in the piece signifies a trace of what is still there whilst acknowledging the fact that some parts have already been lost.
