Rachel Weldon
From Here Gated
2014, 2014/15
photographic prints Video Installation, 18 mins. 19 sec.
A major part of my practice is the connection I have with the materials I use. I collect them from my immediate environment. The materials have their own voice, their own substance and I see myself as a conduit of their anecdotes. These blinds are over 100 years old and come directly off the side of my house. I have withheld from interfering with their current materiality, wanting to preserve the raw presence and memory I have of them in the context of my home. The intent of this work is to create an immersive environment through which viewers can interpret and experience fragments of my storytelling, through multiple entry points. Conceptually, my practice explores the authority projected by objects, and notions of thinking and learning that ‘bind’ you indefinitely, for example, the benefits of hindsight and notions of being at the centre of power and action. The exploitation of the blinds as a screening device creates a tension and distortion of being bound, removing the distinction between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. The various outcomes indicate frequent shifts of focus, lapses of logic, formal disunity and their simultaneous aura of urgency, resolve, interruption and distraction. This piece, for me, is a site of explicit reflection and nostalgia. The art becomes a semi-autonomous aspect of lived experience, for the artist as much as for the viewer.
Rachel's work lets the object speak for itself, inferring bits and pieces of a story. I wonder can the absence of an object also speak?
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