My artistic practice is concerned with memory and loss. My current psycho geographic textile piece explores genius loci (sense of place) as “a site of mystery [which] seek[s] to reveal the true nature that lies beneath the flux of the everyday”. [i]
Psycho geography is a multi-faceted artistic and literary movement which seeks “new ways of apprehending our urban environment”. I have focused on a small street in Leamington Spa as a microcosm of changes in the urban landscape as small shops close under a multiplicity of economic and social pressures. I am interested in how those imperceptible and irreversible changes to our urban landscape signal an ongoing change in our culture.
My piece contrasts a horizontal movement across the topography of the street with a vertical descent through its past portrayed through a series of printed images layered like an archaeological dig.
The first layer is a plan view of part of the streetscape. The second is a series of photographs of detail found within the street – some recognisable and others more ephemeral – the final layer represents memories and thoughts just beyond grasp.
The three monoprints on the wall represent fleeting recall fixed in time by being formally encapsulated in a frame.
Influences include: Colin Booth, Rachel Whiteread, Natasha Kerr, Lizzie Cannon and Carole Waller; writers – Peter Ackroyd and Iain Sinclair; photographers – Ed Ruscha, John Gossage and Peter Fraser, and architects involved with the redrawing of place – Lebbus Woods and Daniel Libenskind.
