- Venue
- The Gateway, Gallery 3
- Starts
- Saturday, May 31, 2008
- Ends
- Monday, July 14, 2008
- Address
- The Gateway, Gallery 3, Chester Street, Shrewsbury SY1 1NB
- Location
- West Midlands
In her first solo show Katie Shipley will be showing a series of works illustrating her exploration of memory. A rusty watch strap is a person lost; a single shell becomes a treasured moment or a broken light bulb a painful loss. Translucent time capsules capture these moments; they are imprisoned in blocks of wax where they fossilise, make imprints on the wax and tangle into each other; a narrative of events, people, time and thoughts. Gathered as memories in our minds, to keep and treasure. There exists a disease that can unravel this process; its power is to unpick these memories, to slowly erase at random the faces, the places and moments in time that we have held onto. Through Alzheimer’s the memory undergoes a dissection that we are incapable of, there are things I wish I could forget and things I want to keep forever, but this disease has no mercy. I will only remember what it allows me to. This work is a response to memory; how I have witnessed my Grandfather’s attempts to hold on to memories that Alzheimer’s threatens to take away; how I struggle to remember a face that once meant the world to me; how an item, an image or a word can resuscitate an emotion and how I can forget the things that I have loved but am haunted by events that I wish I could take away.
