Art and Ideas: Time and Memory

 

                                                                     ' Childhood Garden' 
 

For the last   5 weeks I've  been  participating  in City Lit  online course  ' Art and Ideas : Time and Memory '. I did  a course  in the same series  in 2019 (   in a real classroom !)   on  the subject ' Space and Place'   and  found it thought-provoking and inspiring - I've been re reading some of the  articles recently.   

In lockdown ,  without the stimulation  of   travelling , visiting galleries  and new experiences, like many people  I've been remembering  the past,  recalling people  and places  I hadn't thought of in years so  it was a topic I was keen to explore  further.   The structure of the course  works well   using Zoom,  each week we  have  a series of readings  on a particular  aspect  which we discuss in small groups    and then shared screens  highlight work  of  contemporary  artists . 

For our  last  session   this week, we will be sharing personal  work  produced in response  to the course ( subject of another blog post)  and in thinking about that , I've  reviewed   the themes and ideas that most resonated  with me.   

Week 1 ‘ Art and Oblivion’   In the first session we introduced ourselves  and looked at types of memory : semantic, personal, involuntary, procedural, cultural, collective, shared.

The  readings  were : Jorge Luis Borges ‘Funes the Magnificant’   )A young man  who could reconstruct every moment lived or dreamt , spending so much time minutely reliving  the past , looking backwards,no time to observe or be in the present ) and Marc Auge ‘ How we forget to remember’  

Artists  included 

Rachel Whiteread  ‘ House’  

Cornelia Parker  Mnemic Traces  ( memories found in objects  that hold evidence of  what the object  has lived through )  ‘ subconscious of a monument 2005’ Room for Margins  1999 .   Some of this work  I was lucky enough to see at  the Whitworth gallery in 2015

  'If we remembered everything   could we make sense of anything?'

Week 2 'Haunted - involuntary  memory '

We  looked at the ways in which memories are triggered, what is it that causes the ghosts of our past to suddenly appear?   Readings  were  from   Proust’s ‘In Search of Lost Time’( ‘The way by Swanns’   translators intro  and extract) and   we shared  our  ‘ Madeline Moments’! 

My memory to do with feel of  fabrics and threads.  I still  have scraps from childhood  dresses   and wear a  fabric mask made from fabric from one of my mum’s  dresses. She’s still protecting me.

 Artists  looked at included Tracey Emin ‘ Why I never became a Dancer ‘  ( an approach to ‘ recovered’ memory in visual arts ) and Mike Kelley ( composite architectural models of all  his school/ colleges constructed from memory

 Our homework -  to map spatial memory, quick floor plan of  childhood home/ school  or familiar building from childhood  

                                                               '  Childhood Home'

 We  moved into a  new build   in 1964 ( when I was 3) . From 1979 when I went to university  only visited for short periods until 1995 when Dad died and the house was sold. Revisiting in  2010   with Ian  who was seeing it for the first time, they’d made substantial improvements , my old bedroom knocked through  to make new bathroom etc it  looked so different. The owner  still remembered  my mum on her Pashley   tricycle  with ‘ wide load'  ‘ sign on basket  from more than 20  years earlier. 

Week 3 'Collective  Memory'  

This session explored collective and cultural memory  with  discussion of readings :Introduction and essay by Maurice Halbwachs from The Collective Memory Reader and David Rieff, In Praise of Forgetting.

Artists/ Artworks  included : Cornelia Parker  'Magna Carta ( an embroidery)  2015', 'War Room  2015' 

Thomas Demand ' Room 1994'  

 Ai Weiwei  Dropping a 'Han Dynasty Urn  1995'    ‘ Straight’ 2005- 2012  ( both of which I saw at RA  exhibition.   

 Jeremy Deller ‘ We’re Here because We’re Here’ 

Looked particularly at work of Anselm  Kiefer  ( unforgettable work seen at RA  and White Cube which triggered memories of my own) 

 Week 4 'Mediated memory'  focused on photography as a medium of memory storage, and exchange – as well as questioning the reliability of our memory when shared with others or filtered through other Readings were : Susan  Sontag on Photography; extracts from Mediated Memories in the Digital Age by Van Dijck -  ( Pictures of Life, Living Pictures )  and a wonderful extract  from Esther Kinsky's ' River'   ( I ordered and am now reading the whole book !)  A lot of the discussions  were about authenticity. 

 Artists  included  Gerhard Richter and Christian Boltanski:  sharing’ autographic’ memories.  I particularly  liked  work of  Idris Khan , every page  of   Roland Barthes 'Camera Lucida ' superimposed , illegible.  

  Our homework  was  sharing a photo '  Seeing/seeing yourself through the eyes of others'   .  I  chose  and sent photos before  reading the texts !  ‘ The Day of Bees'   July 17 2020.    I also had  ideas around ‘ memory  storage' : crates of  slides and packets of photos in garage , not  looked at in 15 years  ! Many people  are spending lockdown sorting through old photos: like ‘ Funes the Magnificent’  I feel that if I started doing that  there wouldn’t be any  time for experiencing  the present. 

                                                                     ' Day  of  Bees' 

'Memory Storage' 

Week 5 ‘ Momento Mori’  ( remember you must die )

Readings: Chapter 10 of Gulliver's Travels; describing a race of immortals ( Struldbrugs ) living among the mortal.  Lucretius 'On the Nature of Things'; an extract from 'An Introduction to Heidegger' ( Dasien's awareness of mortality)

Art works  were mainly video/film :    Mark Wallinger ‘ Threshold to the Kingdom’   2000

 Bill Viola ‘ Ocean  without a shore’  2008 

Kris Vervaeke   Ad infinatum. 

Hirokazu Koreeda ‘After Life’1998  

The subject  was challenging and might seem morbid  (especially in the times we're living in ) but  ultimately life affirming, in accepting mortality,  to make the most of life  as you don’t know when  you will die.  

Lucretius : "Life is granted to none for freehold, to all  on lease"

Visit to Salt Mills, Saltaire

A year ago I combined taking some  plants to handover to Natural England  staff with visiting 'Cloth and Memory 2' at Salt Mills, Saltaire and although there is no exhibition  there at the moment, it worked well  so repeated it this year. Very mixed emotions as it's probably the end of my involvement  after nearly 25 years.  Arriving around 11.30  for discussions  and disbelief over coffee and cakes then a look around the Hockney exhibitions , time spent browsing in the book and art shops  , resisting the gorgeous jewellery ( I succumbed last year!). Most of all some time for contemplation  and reflection away from work, making plans on the trains   

During  CQ winter school  on rust marks with Alice Fox, we were having a discussion about Cloth and Memory exhibition, how interesting it was. People had different favourites and  many of us ( myself included) found that what stuck in our minds  after a year was not necessarily  what grabbed us at the time.  I was also looking around Saltaire this time with fresh eyes , seeing some of the  areas that inspired Alice, like the broken yellow lines on the cobbles. I got some strange looks taking this photo from the gangs of schoolboys that were hanging around the station!

Alice Fox ' Gifts From the Pavement'

 

  There was one piece of work by Machiko Agano from that exhibition  that was redisplayed in one of the entrance areas on the ground floor.  It looked very different in a  new context. Many of the Japanese pieces although  based on the themes of Cloth and Memory  do not seem so powerful in retrospect as those that were inspired directly from the building itself and the processes and people  it represents. The following photos are from last year.

Diana Harrison 'Handkerchiefs'  inspired by the flagstones

Jeanette Appleton " Production Line:People's Lives" Felt books/ledgers placed within the walls of the spinning room

Rachel Gray 'Shadow Pieces' stitched layered , patched and mended,  worked well with the peeling paint of the walls.

David Hockney ipad drawings

One of the reasons I arranged the meeting for a Wednesday was that so I could see  David Hockney's ' 25  Trees and other pictures' Besides the 3 huge photographs showing these trees in different seasons, finding beauty in the mundane ( it included a bus shelter!) there  was a projection room showing the latest drawings done on iphone or ipad which he sends regularly to the gallery.  Lots of vases of flowers ( glass works particularly well using this medium)  and other quick sketches, so lively.  'The Bigger Picture' at the RA a couple of years ago  remains for  me one of the most memorable exhibitions of recent years.

Remembering Cloth and Memory

My blogging has been rather patchy this year,  mainly with so much going on in work and play ( which is a good thing!) that there's been little time to reflect. Looking back through old posts as I do towards the end of the year, I realise  that  on several occasions I never got round to  reporting in full  as I'd promised on what I'd been up to.  For example in a post from July, I never did elaborate on seeing Bellowhead at 'Kew the Music';my starring role  (wearing orchid earrings!) in a film narrated by David Attenborough; on my trips to various orchid sites and  to Hampton Court Flower Show or to re-write my post on RA Summer Exhibition  that I accidently deleted while attempting to blog with my tablet!

Too  late now  but  before I forgot completely I did want to mention my visit to Cloth and Memory 2 at Salt Mills Saltaire. It's nearly 2 months ago when I  had a day trip combining handing over some precious Lady's Slipper Orchid seedlings with  seeing this exhibition. It had some of the same exhibiting artists as ' Bite Size' a couple of years ago but obviously on a completely different scale!!! The space, the  168m long spinning room, was amazing in itself and the way that the work  was derived from  its different qualities and memories was thought-provoking.

My  favourite piece was by Masae Bamba ( who also  made 'Black  Water' for 'Bite Size'): a large scale 'sea' of indigo cloth  printed with her daughters' first attempts at writing.

The peeling paint layers left on the walls were wonderful and I liked how Rachel Gray had referenced these, with several narrow brick-like works  of layered, patched, embroidered, printed images from the archives local to Saltaire  

 

Yoriko Yoneyama's  instillation of a web of dried rice threaded on fine thread was intriguing, reminding me of the rain outside ( and occasionally inside, there were strategically placed buckets...) blurring the images glimpsed through the camera obscura ( by Hannah Leighton-Boyce ) placed in the ventilation cavities.

You were encouraged to add your own memories of cloth - mine was photographed but didn't make it to the website. 

 

My CQ Journal quilts this year have the theme of indigo, many of them assembled from scraps. I was thinking of my experiences  at Saltaire when I was putting this one together: the  crumpled indigo  dyed strips of  'jemima' laid over dyed cotton wadding, slashed and peeled back to reveal underlying layers;  the fine  machine stitching using  white polyneon thread(slightly shiny); the effect of clouds and rain.    

Structural works from Cloth and Memory 2

 

 Kasuri structures of Yoriko Murayama

 

 

Combination of 2 works by Koji Takaki