Symposium review – Rhiannon

Rhiannon sent out a briefing paper prior to the session and this is my summary of it and the session.

• Themes: memory and the concept of Archive
• Form: performative including subject participation
• Media: Video and artefacts*

Rhi has asked we discuss three things:

• Bailey’s concept of palimpsest and time perspectivism
• Doreen Massey’s thoughts on space
• Lefrevbrue’s Production of Space- Social Space

Rhi has posed the following questions:

1. Are these themes visible  in my work and if so where or where not?
2. What other themes are visible ?

Discussion
Rhi’s use of:

• layering
• time and space
• repurposing things and places
• perception of time and space
• the differences and similarities between Clara’s and Rhi’s focus
• performance and absence

So Rhiannon, if the ‘material record of global history is a palimpsest that stretches across the whole surface of the earth’— then your art, your ‘job’ has been simply uncovering that in one small intersection point? (Jonathan)

Thoughts

• The themes I saw when viewing Rhi’s work: Place, space, artefacts and voices
• Small things that touch peoples lives (in a similar way to Trystan Williams’s etched works)
• Space as a narrative rather than just geographic and this is triggered by Rhi’s act of creating video stories and or leaving things in a space. Indeed this makes the social construction of place rather than space explicit. In that way Rhis work has similar themes to mine.
• The form of Rhi’s work appears anti aesthetic and uncontrived (although it is contrived of course). But I am not sure whether this is planned or because the recording of the act is not seen as part of the art.
• But the discussion took my view further through the notions listed under the discussion heading.

So I think Rhi’s work chimes with Bailey, Massey and Lefrevbrue but also her approach puts me in mind of photographers like Fay Godwin’s Our Forbidden Land or John Davies’ A Green and Pleasant Land. Yet while they record change of space and the making of place Rhi engages the local subjects with the issues through her art.

———————–

* These are just a way of recording the art rather than being the preferred medium of the art.

Godwin,F.(1990) Our Forbidden Land,Published by Jonathan Cape

Davies,J.(1987) A Green and Pleasant Land,Published by Cornerhouse Publications

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