Camden Arts Centre is an interesting complex comprising
several spacious galleries, artist’s studio, reading room, café and a large
range of art books for sale in the foyer.
Primarily I went to see the artist Moira Davey’s show “Life without sheets
of paper to be scribbled on is masterpiece.”
Davey is a Canadian artist working in photography, film
and writing. The three for her are
intertwined. She creates what the
curator describes as “intimate visual essays”, recycling and reusing her old
photo stock to make new narratives. As
part of my art installation involves Mail art postcards, I wanted to look at her
use of this approach. I was intrigued by
how she takes a series of her photographs of ordinary objects, close-ups,
letters, writings, and posts each of them to other’s addresses or to the Arts
Centre. The stamped mailed objects take
on the battered imprints, creases and folds of the journeys they make, adding
to their stories. She writes stickers or
uses ink to mark the returned objects adding further narrative layers. As she says “All stories are somehow survival
stories…with good or bad futures.”
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| Man/Boy/Woman/Paris 2009/14 |
This has sparked an idea for my own Mail-Art
project. I am examining Sheppey identity
as my project theme. I have created postcards
which are self-addressed and stamped. I
am inviting people on the Island to take a postcard and tell a Sheppey story on
the back in whatever way they wish, then return it to me. I thought it would be interesting to explore
this idea of a layering of stories on these returned postcards. I will do this by creating hand-written notes
of participant’s responses to the project, and stick these on the postcards, to
create a kind of story collage. One of
Davey’s films was also screened as part of the exhibition, which I found rather
less accessible, partly I think because I disliked her droning narrator voice. However, one quote struck me…“Why does
everyone want to tell a story?” she asks, and giving one possible reply she quotes
from Goethe, “The reward of storytelling is to be able to let go.”
http://www.camdenartscentre.org/whats-on/view/m-Davey
Two stories...
ReplyDeleteSheppey has a part to play in family history, as my Granddad once had a caravan in Eastchurch - an old train carriage he had converted. It was probably quite grand when he built it, but when first I saw it it was an overgrown relic (sold years earlier - he graduated to a bungalow in Telscombe Cliffs). We had several holidays on the island, and my favourite memory is of seeing my first live band, at our Leysdown caravan site social club, when I was 14. I even remember their name - "Pheonix", and I was completely awestruck by them, although they were probably a bottom of the barrel covers band. I've absolutely no idea what they played. A year or two later I had graduated to the Weeley Festival, three days of the most exciting bands in the country, but nothing can take away the thrill of that first gig.
I also remember the day the family trekked out to Warden Point, with its scrambly-up hill, and knee-deep sludgey "mud", if that's the right word for it. We wore ourselves out there running up and down the hill, and generally doing kids stuff, and pretty much had the beach to ourselves. When mum decided it was time to go back to the caravan, as we went back up the hill another family passed going down to the beach, with a rather cute girlie who looked about my age... I feigned an excuse to stay behind on my own, and faffed around at the top of the hill, trying to pluck up courage to introduce myself. Eventually I composed myself, gritted my teeth, and walked down the hill and round the corner to the bit of the beach they had walked towards - only to find to my horror that the whole family had stripped to the buff, even the granny! I turned tail and fled!!!
Thanks so much for your stories Mik, I have included them in the postcard hanging piece I've made for my final show. I'll be posting up photos of the installation. All the best, Jo
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