Fold

The past few weeks have been full of new ideas and challenges. The Culture Box project came through and I'm busy experimenting with the ideas I sent them.....  Thinking more about how to make visible my own process of sifting through images and forgetting most of them but selecting and working round and round the very strong few...And how this process can be used in working with people with dementia to celebrate the visual processes explored during the AHRC funded project in the south west...  My proposal had to be rewritten (twice!) but to my delight we were all able to agree the commission after some really energising conversations.  Here is the core of it  

'This multimedia piece will explore complex themes concerning creativity, care, imagination, respect, compassion and security.
 
It will sit within the relationships between staff and residents strand of the Culture Box Show, which is the final part of an 18 month AHRC project exploring how creative activities can support people living with dementia in care homes.
 
I will take the notion of the Deleuzian fold to generate an interactive piece. Deleuze describes how the world is interpreted as a body of infinite folds and surfaces that twist and weave through compressed time and space - a metaphor for describing the complex and evolving research on creativity and dementia and my own practice. The final 29 pieces will be made in collaboration with the five Dyads (care worker and resident in the participating care homes), one artwork for each home, responding to activities that can be done remotely and with appropriate art materials. These final pieces will explore in their construction and the process of the making the notion of Deleuzian fold.'


So I have been down to the basement a lot and started experimenting with collage moments. Just a tiny bit of a photocopied image is enough to kick start a whole host of emotion - bringing shapes and colours together to describe the longing.  Without the tiny torn up copies this does not happen. The addition of the torn up pieces (from my bag of early drawings and prints) seemed to feel right. Memories became embedded into the paper. This melding together was satisfying - and related back to the Deleuzian idea where things can be 'compressed' within the fold...

So exciting.

Experiments without using the torn up old artwork or copies left a void of feeling in comparison... And the collage images although decorative didn't have the presence of those with that embedded layer...

Next step is to work out how to make the pieces on fabric that can be folded and unfolded between residents as in Her Tree...Its been a beautiful few days and I have dreamt of Mum so many times while making all this work.