Exhibition opening

My Artist Statement:

“To remember other people’s memories is to be wounded by their wounds. More precisely, it is to let their struggles, their passions, their pasts resonate within one’s own past and present, and destabilize them” - Kaja Silverman

My work is based on the memories and confessions of others. The text is taken from letters received daily by the “Juliet Club” a group of agony aunts in Verona, Italy the setting for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The club reply to thousands of letters and emails from people seeking help and support, or wanting to share their experiences of love. I was able to access some of these letters and I then used the phrases and short sentences that I felt expressed the most pain and suffering. I wanted to make these anonymous private feelings and secrets into shared memories, for others to relate to in their own way. These type of memories are often hard to recall, and are sometimes repressed, however I aimed to celebrate them instead by displaying them on large material resembling flags with bright colours and patterns, making them hard to ignore. It is important to also remember our own bad experiences as we learn from these experiences and they guide our future behaviour. The process of sewing the text is an important aspect of my work, as it represents the repair of something which has been torn apart, in remembering these bad moments we aim to recover from them and get past them. I wanted to display my work here in St. Brides because in the same way these people have wrote to the Juliet Club for guidance and hope, there are many people who look to religion for this help and forgiveness. I have also made 14 of these flags, referencing the stations of the cross, the suffering that Jesus Christ endured prior to his death.

“ You can erase someone from your mind. Getting them out of your heart is another story”