DisRemembering
CF for BookArtObject 6: LOSSED
2022. Artist book: letterpress & watercolour on Stonehenge & Zeta mattpost papers, typewriter carbon on bond paper. Trifold cover, with book-block hand-sewn with linen thread and tucked-in loose paper elements. Closed: 150 (h) x 250 (w) x 8 (d) mm. Open: dimensions variable. Two editions: I-IV, for BAO6; 10 copies for general sale.
Created as part of a collaborative artist book project, featuring Sara Bowen, Rhonda Ayliffe and myself. We responded to Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score (Penguin, 2015), which explores the effect of trauma on the mind and the body. Sara and I made work directly about our families; Ronnie is exploring the trauma inflicted on her community by the 2019/20 bushfires.
This work is part of a series of books I am making about my mother’s trauma-based early-onset dementia. The first was a small artist book called Remembering Herself (2021), about the way her memory is activated when certain music is played. I used Spotify to experiment with music she liked, as well as music that was popular when she was younger, and this has created a useful timeline to gauge how much she can remember. She has strong memories of her childhood, her adolescence, her courtship with my father, her husband of 55 years, but things start to grow fuzzy around the time I enter my teen years, and she remembers nothing of finding the body of my 17-yo brother. Mum sparkles when the right music is played. The song, ‘You Don’t Own Me’ by Leslie Gore seems to be a foundational tune from her own teen years, and her common response if challenged is the wonderfully powerful ‘I’m allowed’. (If you click on the last image here, it opens a slideshow selection from the 2021 book.)
DisRemembering (2022) is a sequel to Remembering Herself; it is more materially complex because I finally had access to a letterpress studio after two years of Covid disruption. By early 2022, mum had completely forgotten that she had a son. This upset my father a bit, but I started to feel that forgetting is not always a negative action, because mum is happier, less burdened, and more able to appreciate each moment than she was when she was weighed down by grief.
I chose Reflex Blue as an intense colour that seems to hold grief but also contains a lively vibration; I used large woodtype letters and made them turn their backs to the reader, exposing their wavelike woodgrain, their wear and tear, and their flaws. The text is poetic yet analytical, thinking about forgetfulness as a desire path, a thin foot-worn shortcut between more established thoroughfares. Meaning exists in the pages, behind the blocks and amongst the gridded watercolour brush-marks that evoke routine, medication, or blue gas flames.
The QR code pictured here is a soundscape by Queensland artist Ross McLennan. I sent him some photos of the book and a short blurb and this was his response. Both the work and the QR code were exhibited together in June 2022 at the Belconnen Arts Space in a group exhibition of University of Canberra Faculty of Arts & Design staff and postgraduates, called Upending | Mending.
