I called in to Flowerfield AC a couple of weeks ago to pick up a piece of glass from a workshop and enquired about the possibility of holding an exhibition/ giving a talk/or running a workshop. Unfortunately no one was available at the time, but I was told the exhibition space was booked until 2024.
As chairman or secretary of Ballymoney Photographic Club I have led a couple of exhibitions in pre-Covid times, one in the exhibition space and one on the gallery.
Currently I am halfway through a MA in Fine Arts at the Open College of the Arts in the UK, and the basis of my work there is the slice of my life between September 1975 and March 1978 during my MSc in Physics at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada and how my memories of it were evoked and how they change with time and are filtered by life experiences.
Themes
The themes of my present work are:
- artefacts evoking and representing memories
- a collection of artefacts from a slice of time
- how memories change with the passage of time and life experience
- the close observation of ordinary artefacts (influenced by the work of Georges Perec)
My Practice
Composites
I scan and/or photograph the artefacts, so I have a digital representations of them and also some original analogue photos of that time. I make digital composites of chosen images, by taking selections of them, and the resulting composite represents a jumble of memories of that time period. Afterwards I may add acrylic paint, via a gel plate, and/or a collage of acrylic ink/paint on tissue paper.
Gel Plate work
I used acrylic paint or ink rolled on to a gel plat, some times added textures oe more layers, to give a more organic appearance to my work.
Extraction Poetry
I use pages from my Brock MSc thesis, which is written in a formal scientific fashion, and try to extract new, interesting meanings from it. Again I use acrylic paint via a gel plate and collage paper to complete the image.
Cubism
I am also experimenting with a sort of cubism. Braque and Picasso sometimes combined views of a subject from different angles, or several scenes of a moving subject in one two-dimensional image. I’m trying to build on my composite work by bringing together several original composites into a single image, maybe representing how some parts of memories solidify, other parts are forgotten and others come into focus.
Origin of my MA work
At the beginning of my MA I was looking for something in my attic and found a shabby, old wallet inside a battered cardboard box.
I didn’t remember this slim wallet and at first I thought it was empty, but there were quite a few pieces of paper and other objects inside. I took out one piece of paper and casually looked at it. I didn’t initially recognise it, but then I saw the words “Glenridge Physics” and “Security Guard” and the memories came flooding back of my time doing the MSc in Canada. Late nights in a windowless laboratory, tuna and onion sandwiches (and Herschey bars) from a vending machine, preparing gold single crystals (shades of alchemy), days spent punching cards for the mainframe computer, followed by rugby training …
Pandora’s Box
The cardboard box, affectionately called ‘Pandora’s Box’, held a lot more artefacts from that slice of my life, 1975-78, with short tails from before and after, mainly letters from family girlfriends, university correspondence, etc. I have some other objects relevant to Brock too around my home; a large beer stein, a ‘most outstanding’ rugby trophy, photos a moustache cup, various photos, etc.
Archiving
In my MA Fine Art work I have documented some of these artefacts, mainly by scanning or photography, and am still contemplating appropriate ways to archive them. At present most of them reside in drawers of a chest.
Use of Artefacts
I have used some of these photos and scans to make composites and collages. These composites represent my jumbled memories of a slice of my life at Brock, and how the memories distort, collapse and reform over time. Currently I’m experimenting with Cubism with the view to combining it with my composite work, since the cubist technique also fragments and distorts conventional images to have multiple views of a subject in one image.
Request
I wonder if Flowerfield would be interested in my work and its relevance to artefacts which we hold dear because they evoke memories (Proust) and how memories change, fade or distort with time and maturity ? I would be very interested in discussing some form of an exhibition and/or talk, if it were possible.
