Laura Oldfield Ford's exhibited drawings of generic urban spaces, playing with the idea of collective memories. As her work depicts places in Walsall, I'm sure it triggers a lot of personal memories for visitors of the gallery. This is what my own work is concerned with: - portraying generic and collective memories that I believe will trigger memories in most people.
I really like how Ford uses biro in meticulous detail to represent the well remembered parts of a memory, and some parts are much more loosely drawn and fade out to nothing - representing the forgotten. I particularly like it when Ford draws the more sketchy/ loose parts in the foreground, as though you are zooming in on a part of the memory which is in the background, and other parts are blurred.
I would like to try using similar techniques to Ford. I think using biro would be a good way of showing the detailed areas, as it is quite linear and bold, representing the well remembered parts of a memory. I am also becoming more interested in the importance of landscape in a memory; I want to look into this further as time and place very much go together in terms of memory.
George Shaw's work is based upon his journeys back to his childhood home, the Tile Hill Estate, Coventry. Places had changes/disappeared, the familiar had become displaced and his memories had been distorted over time. I am quite interested in how our perceptions of things can be different as a child, such as bigger or more idyllic, thus distorting our memories as adults. In Shaw's paintings, he uses Humbrol enamel, which is best-known for a teenage boy's first choice for painting model aeroplanes. I like that even the medium that Shaw uses makes reference to his adolescence - adding more to the content and feeling of nostalgia. I am interested in this idea of using items that will evoke nostalgia in people in my work: - so it could be a useful tool in triggering memories.
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