I am permanent yet unstable. My contents are fixed in time but easily lost in the past. Stories forgotten and retold, memories recalled over and over until they change altogether from their original. Like a scan; ripped, rendered and degraded, each attempt to preserve is another layer lost. A paradox worth celebrating.
Am I stuck in the past? As I attempt to reorder myself, make sense of all that has come before me, I am aware of the uncertainty of the present. Is my heritage merely a comfort? It is human nature to desire to find our place in time and history; if we lock away the past in air conditioned walls for the purpose of conservation, do we not forget what is inside? Now is the time to look back, open the boxes and expose what's inside to the elements, in order to find a way to navigate forward.
A piece for the group exhibition 'We Are Human-ish', which opened June 26th at Studio 3 Gallery, Canterbury, Memory Quilt II continues to investigate the seemingly endless layers of narratives within archives. Hannah re-works her original piece to combine the existing videos with footage from her most recent piece, Luminescence (The Fall of Home), which considers the cyclical nature of closure and regeneration at Chatham Historic Dockyard.
Studio 3 Gallery is located within the School of Arts at the University of Kent's main campus, thus giving Memory Quilt II a platform for interrogating the University's decision to close the School of Music and Fine Art at the Medway campus, situated in an area that has experienced significant economic deprivation in recent years. Memory Quilt II has an underlying commentary in this situation; how can one university campus thrive with investment in arts and culture, while the other is facing complete extinction?