‘Mummy: Stratified Spreadsheet Drawing’, 2022
Dimensions: monolithic
Material: aluminium print
‘Mummy: Exhibits A through E’
Dimensions: variable
Material: wood, architrave, sill, skirting, cornice, hinges
Thinking of the term ‘mother tongue’; the language that a person grows up speaking from early childhood, I began working with the colours that I grew up around, which had left their impression upon me; circa 1989 to 1994.
These colours were never just a fresh lick of paint, but layer upon layer of a new colour that mummified the surface and the previous colours beneath. I recall the breath-taking feeling of these colours suffocating me as they filled the walls, even flowing through to the furnishings and up onto the ceiling.
What if these colours sucked the room of air and somehow embodied all the various communications and utterances within that space?
‘Mummy’, 2022, explores the subtleties of memory and the monumental qualities of momentary things, through an act of reparation, where each layer of colour recollected in ‘Exhibit A’ through ‘Exhibit E’ is mapped in the accompanying ‘Stratified Spreadsheet Drawing’. Following a process of forgetting and remembering, words have been sourced to recall what may underlie each smothered colour.
A three-track playlist accompanies this work ‘http://www.mmforrestbeckett.com/playlists-for-a-practice/.