bookmark project

Susan Turner invited 15 artists to produce works on the theme of bookmark. Each artist was to produce 16 pieces to share with each other, and one to exhibit. Here is mine:

artist’s statement:

bookmark project – “wintercount” series, collage on panel, 12.5 x 12.5cm. 2017.

A bookmark is a basic mnemonic device. Used to mark a place in time, its function creates its meaning. It is, itself, a kind of presence, neither past nor future… it has the immediacy of a memory, yet it is not the memory itself. It is like a work of art.

The “wintercount” series is concerned with memory: ways in which the present is marked, and how it is altered by the nature of its recording, collection, and recollection. In “the space between winters”, layers of paper, pasted together act as representations of events, documented over time, one over another, marked by folds, tears, etc., interacting with each other, a piece of string, and the fabric grid. Ink, rubbed over the collage, is a recording medium, used intaglio to highlight textures created by the layering of materials. Its use is also a transformational activity. Varnish, white pigment, graphite, and red oxide mark certain areas of the composition, in reference to how remembering, forgetting, and intervening circumstances inevitably alter the perception of events over time.