Initial thoughts

Last year my work was based around memory, with emphasis on the distortion and fragmentation of memories. I am particularly interested in how we visualise our memories, and trying to depict this in a physical piece of art. I find this topic to be a constant struggle and inspiration, as it is something that is not tangible and very subjective, so I always feel that improvements can be made in my work to improve the depiction of memory. The visualisation of a memory is something that is very hard to pin down, as science can't even really yet give the answers on how and why we picture our memories. I am particularly interested in the idea of collective memory; that our memories are influenced by other people's, by mass media imagery, by culture, and by shared experiences. With my work I am aiming to produce art that the general audience can relate to, see themselves in and feel like it is a familiar memory/experience to them. I also find this a difficult thing to achieve, as who is to say whether one person visualises their memories the same as the next person? Are we all different in this? Previous work I have done has very much focused on childhood memories: - experiences that pretty much every child has been through. I tried to think of generic situations which are familiar to nearly everyone, such as school days, playing at the park etc. I think most people could relate to the situations I had thought up. As soon as I start trying to depict a memory however, it becomes clear that it is very hard to include the whole audience in this supposed 'shared memory'. Even if every single viewer has a childhood memory of playing at the park, when I get imagery of parks it tends to be very modern - the gadgets, fashion, architecture are all signifiers of what sort of era the memory is supposed to be from. Therefore, a lot of the memories I try to depict relate most strongly to my own generation more than any other. I am going to continue with this theme, as I can combine my own personal memories with this idea of the 'collective' memory. I don't plan for my work to be completely exclusive though, I still hope that all viewers will be able to relate my work to their own memories, it's just I think this will happen most naturally for my own generation. The age of the audience of course is not the only factor, the sort of everyday life I try to depict is very Westernised and usually obviously relates most strongly to the British public.

I have decided that I am going to move away slightly from trying to depict childhood memories; I don't believe that memory always has to be about childhood. Firstly I am going to look more into generally the shared experiences a lot of people have; this may be the experiences shared by a lot of my generation, of the British public, of students, or just generally of modern life.