'Memorial Wall of Italy'

'Memorial Wall of Italy'

This is the 1st artwork of my 2nd year at Staffordshire university. It's based on the last artwork I did, at the end of year exhibition in Level 4, and my recent holiday to Italy. It combines photographs I took and the drawings I did during the holiday. It's very personal to me because these are my real memories, unlike the last work I did before this: 'A Desire Stuck Now But Not Forever'

I did 2 collages of what I pictured Greece to be, since I've never been there before. I used found Google images. These layers of the collage to make a imaginary landscape where exhibited with them spread evenly out so people can see the frozen process of the nearly-completed image coming together. It's like looking behind the scenes of a film because you can see more than just on the screen.

It's different when you can imagine a place and have been there for yourself, because at first, I could only do 2 landscape collages of what I pictured Greece to be, but when I saw Italy for real, there were lots of perspectives and events to see. I was hoping to use the same method of layering in creating on of the landscapes but because they are my photos and not found google images, it's different. So I tried another way of separating the landscape in a simple, geometric way to have the same essence of incompleteness and a new theme of fragmentation, since that's what happens to memories through some time. The biggest picture in the middle is a landscape I picked randomly, while the smaller photos and drawings around it are complete but are all part of the bigger picture, not to be missed. Therefore looking at a different type of fragmentation.  You can combine so much more as well. It's a visual narrative and they photos are placed in order of the places I visited, like a timeline in a narrative. The audience may not have the same memorable feeling as me about this work but I hope it triggers memories for them if they have been there before. They may be good or bad memories, though I would prefer they trigger pleasure as that's what these memories do for me. I want to give the audience what I have. I would like my audience to be curious to learn the story of my journey. I will research into the theme of memory and develop from the interpretations and ideas of this artwork from my colleagues.

'A Desire Stuck But Not Forever'