Jessica Turrell

​

Gaze

​

Rememberings

​

This body of work explores the process by which the viewing of family photographs and the articulation of associated memories can subtly take the place of true memories; a process that results in memories that represent the infinite layers of Rememberings but rarely the pure unaltered experience.

 

Each of the panels in the Rememberings series consists of a printed, etched and enamelled portrait image overlaid with a veil of fragile white etched and enamelled text recounting trivial memories from childhood. This film of words serves both to obscure and reveal the image below.

​

 

Only words remain

​

One of a series, this piece has evolved out of Jessica's interest in the relationship between memory and the photograph. Family photographs serve to prompt, reinforce (and some would argue, replace) our memories, memories that we in turn share with others via the showing of photographs and the articulation of associated recollections. This desire to remember and to be remembered that underlies the taking and keeping of photographs adds a poignancy to the ‘found’ photograph where the subject is finally and irrevocable lost from memory.

 

In this work delicate and barely legible veils of words serve as a metaphor for the fragility and mutability of the subject. The layers of text represent differing and retreating interpretations of a photograph; that of the subject themselves; that of one with familial knowledge of the subject; and that of the viewer to whom the subject is totally unknown. The text (the ‘memories’) remains but the photograph itself is absent from the work, making up the final remove from memory to forgetting.

​