 Retrace:
Scripting Memory - an exhibition by Emily Smith
Press release
As the winner of the Site Darbyshire award, Emily
Smith was offered an exhibition at Stroud Valleys Artspace (SVA)
and the manufacture of new work from Darbyshire Framemakers. Rather
than simply the presentation of a cheque, the award offers a form
of mentoring service from Mark Darbyshire and SVA in the form of
a dialogue with the winner in order to realise work which previously
could only have existed at the proposal stage.
With the award Mark Darbyshire intends to act as a conduit between
the public funded artist-led SVA and the art market of gallery owners,
collectors and museums. SVA is principally a site of production
and it also acts as a facilitator for project-based experimental
events allowing both studio artists and visiting artists to develop
their work in an environment somewhere between the cell-like privacy
of the studio and the glare of attention of the gallery.
The series of work that the award will enable Emily Smith to realise
is itself an enquiry into the systems of realisation, how thoughts
are realised in form. She is using the award as an opportunity to
further her interest in how language, speech and writing both create
and obfuscate meaning by developing her ‘writing machines’.
The work questions objective and singular memory, and investigates
how the past is recalled through both visual memory and physical
trace.
Emily Smith exhibited at the Site08 Darbyshire exhibition in June
08 alongside work by national and international artists as part
of the Site festival, an annual festival of contemporary arts which
takes place in Stroud, Gloucestershire. UK artist Peter Liversidge
selected and shortlisted the entries for the award. Peter Liversidge
has exhibited widely in Europe and the US. Liversidge exhibited
at the recent Europalia Festival in Brussels, having been selected
by the British Council as the UK’s representing artist.
Alongside the exhibition there will be a series of talks, discussions
and poetry readings on each Sunday during the exhibition. A particular
highlight will be a talk on Sunday 8th March at 11am by Brian Dillon,
author of a memoir, In the Dark Room, and the UK editor of Cabinet.
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photo: Colin Glen |
