TARA GILBEE

YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS

The series, You must remember this, is part of a series of investigations related to forensic traces and personal remnants. It is a body of work I started a long time ago but only recently completed as part of a residency, with the Inhabit International program (supported by Punctum Inc) and time spent in the atelier at L’École Nationale Supérieure d’art de Bourges in France. The photograms captured here are of crumpled notes that have found their way to me. They have been collected during my travels, from local noticeboards, streetscapes or friends bags. Some notes are more personal than others but all, in some way, have an autobiographical relationship to me.

When made into photograms, the notes become beautiful inscriptions. The floating paper and writing have an Xray quality to them, which is a medium I have worked with previously. After making the photograms, they were then digitised and printed on Hahnemühle Photo Rag. The digitisation process allowed me to enlarge the little notes to create a sense of proportion that one may sense when looking under a microscope for clues within these mysterious fragments. This particular selection of photograms highlights their abstract qualities, elegant cursive writing and the layered sense of palimpsest. The scuffs, wear and tear, as well as the hand written word contrasted with the type render timelines in these little notes lives.

My interest in handwriting and the broken personal narratives, taps into some forms of forensic analysis but also into the psychological state of memory, of placing importance and notation on things in one’s mind. Recently I was reading a piece of writing by Paul Carter(1) were he describes the nature of remembering as a pun, the break down of the word to re – member. Just as re-collection breaks into a pun in this exhibition. The process of collecting and re-presenting these works exerts some of the notion of the process of memory and recall.

BIOGRAPHY

Tara Gilbee was born in 1970 in Australia where she currently works and lives. She received a BFA in Sculpture from the Victoria College of the Arts in 1996. Her work is varied and encompasses photography, installation, sound and video. Tara often works both site specifically and in collaboration across mediums and disciplines to explore transitional and ephemeral states. Her artwork varies in relation to the space in which it is presented or the artists with whom she is working. Often engaging an underlying psychology that has a dark beauty and entrancing phenomena, Tara investigates traces, draws out illusions and particular textures or actions to create a fascinating new vision of what is observable. In addition to her art practice, Tara is a curatorial collaborator in the ‘space in between’ artist group. She has written articles for key arts publications and lectured at Victorian Universities about her practice. Tara has also been awarded grants to create art and has attended national and international residencies. Her work is held in both private and public collections.

For more information on the arts organisations and texts referred to above:
http://www.punctum.com.au/inhabit.html
http://www.ensa-bourges.fr/

(1) “Unwonted Silence: An Gorta Mór and the Presence of Sound Paul Carter”, Hearing Places Sound Place Time Culture. Ros Bandt, Michelle Duffy & Dolly McKinnon (eds), pg. 218