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Artist Statement
I am fascinated with the fact that every building is a hub of memories, which
turn an architectural construction into an emotionally connected place. I
look at buildings as an inter-relationship of the past and present; of imprints
of history and current activity. I create photographic and object based light
installations derived from photographs documenting abandoned buildings. Although
the installations are inspired by these spaces, they can never truly recreate
them. Photographs and objects in the installations simultaneously push the
viewer back to a time and space while pulling them into the present. The photographs
contextualise the objects and create a conflict which plays on the friction
between memory and reality, the perception between the past and the present,
and the object and the photograph. By confronting the viewer with such a dichotomy,
the installations represent the futility of attempts to re-capture moments
forever lost in the past. However, by deconstructing the composition of the
photograph I take it out of its state of limbo and into the present time,
allowing a reconnection with memories and imagination from the locality of
the experienced here and now.1
In my work I dig into specific locations through the use of photography; documenting
derelict buildings, mining their memories and recording the human absence.
These abandoned buildings are in a state of limbo. They exist neither in the
past nor present and only time inhabits these now empty spaces. The buildings
are left as the only witness to an often overlooked and forgotten time. To
investigate architecture is to engage with people, both past and present.
It becomes the study of individual lives. By recording these traces of personal
memory, the broader social, historical, regional and locational memory are
examined along with issues of rural displacement. This excavation and deconstruction
of locations can show this transitional history unfolding and using the momentariness
of the present creates intimate moments of reverie with the viewer.
1. Extract from exhibition review by Annabelle von Girsewald.
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