Searching for Meaning and a sense of place
Show of paintings undertaken between 2018 and 2019 shown in Arnolfini research studio in May 2019 exploring Meaning, sense of place, Narrative and memory Show undertaken with Stretto Architects
Starless: Based on Narrative and Memory, this painting is part of a series ( an album) that explores my experiences of summers in Berlin.
As a child I would spend summers visiting my German grandparents and have to pass through a series of checkpoints run by the occupying troops, the first to enter East German, the second to enter Berlin .
The Russian checkpoints were always the most difficult to negotiate, setting up the backdrop to weeks of contrasts: blissfulness in an environment of enforced isolation and division,with days spent negotiating the impact of both a divided Germany and the omnipresent effect of the Berlin Wall.
Although the embrace of family and community was strong ,these visits were permeated by much that was left unsaid,stories told in a foreign language with much that I didn't want to know,places where access was recently denied.
While listening to radio free berlin, I preferred an imagined reality,a reality based on incomplete memories,and partial truth,achieving a form of reconciliation only by leaving.
