‘As Far As I Can Recall’ is a body of work that reflects on the interplay between memory, materiality and personal experience.
A period of brain fog made me aware that.memories are not artefacts encased in glass, to be returned to at will. They (de)evolve over time, following their own journeys - this makes them precious.
The work is influenced by aged objects, relics and altarpieces, which embody the Portuguese concept of ‘saudade’ - a bittersweet presence of absence, or ‘the love that remains’. Materials undergo trials that emphasise texture and mimic time’s visible traces, a reminder that memories are removed from their origins.
Through intimate, layered and textured pieces I centre experience as knowledge of the greatest value, resisting pristine representation to celebrate imperfection. Painting on cardboard and using vintage frames deliberately questions what is precious while subverting beliefs around value.
The work honours memory as mutable, intimate and imperfect, resisting monumentality and embracing the beauty found in remembering, forgetting and the transformation that occurs in between. I paint memories to acknowledge that we love and remember things not as they are, but as we are.
‘Memento’, mixed media on primed cardboard,
22.7 x 17.7 cm.
22.7 x 17.7 cm.
‘Lembrar/Esquecer’, mixed media on primed cardboard,
11.1 x 16.9 cm.
11.1 x 16.9 cm.
‘Fleeting’, mixed media on primed cardboard,
31.5 x 19 cm.
31.5 x 19 cm.
‘Middle Distance’, mixed media on primed cardboard,
17 x 11.3 cm.
17 x 11.3 cm.
‘A Luz e a Lua’, mixed media on primed cardboard,
23 x 45 cm.
23 x 45 cm.
‘Clarity’, mixed media on primed cardboard, 21 x 16.5 cm.
‘As it was’, mixed media on primed cardboard, 15 x 19.4 cm.
‘Murmuration’, muxed media on primed cardboard, 31.5 x 19 cm.