My work explores the diachronic nature of memory and its relationship to narrative, seeking a deliberate collision between the mystical, esoteric tradition and the empirical tradition. Drawing in ideas around polysemics and narrative and set against the heightened colour and manipulated picture space, the work seeks to create a state of epistemic questioning.
These works are predicated on an interest in, and considerations on, recent discourse and theory in cognitive science and neuroscience, and the questions these fields have raised about the nature of self and memory moving forward. These discoveries, seen in the context of the shift from Hegelian historical meta-narratives to the primacy of theories of collective memory within the sphere of critical theory, arising from Halbwachs writings, to the considerations of Jürgen Habermas on the primacy of the everyday, raise interesting questions about both our interpretation and understanding of images and the veracity and reliability of memory and memory representations.
I am interested in the tensions inherent in contemporary life and seek to explore these by seeking out the quiet and unglamorous corners of the modern world for my image making purposes. A row of tatty garages, a low slung holiday chalet, a line of modest pensioner bungalows, humble subjects, devoid of the urgent appeal of more obvious locations, act as a visual, creative and intellectual foil for an exploration of contemporary notions of the self, identity, place and memory.
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