Landscape:
Perspectives on Memory

3 - 11 April 2024

Richard Calow
Tamara Clarke
Kim Evans
Kathleen Stewart

Private View: Wednesday 3 April | 6- 8 pm

Visits by appointment, please email to arrange

Trace, 179 Wollaton Street, Nottingham NG1 5GE

Photographs are often perceived to be about memories; a mistaken ‘repository’ that locates the absences that occur in our fallible processes of remembering. Land can equally serve as a ‘site’ of memory, the tangible terrain of lived experience, often able to re-ignite and ‘trigger’ recollection of the past.

This exhibition explores the relationship between photography, land and memory in the work for four artists whose contextual concerns differ, but whose interests coalesce through questions of belonging, trauma, place, heritage and identity and reside collectively in their interpretation of diverse landscapes.

Photographs do not possess memory. It is a human faculty; utilized to construct meaning often through interpreting images as well as in wider cultural discourse and personal experiences. Like photographs, land is a social product and does not retain significance by itself. We impart significance and meaning upon land; constructing space into place. As a result, land can serve as a tangible embodiment of personal and cultural memory.

Each work presents a unique visual inquiry. Drawing upon autobiographical methodology, a work examining the landscapes of Malta and England considers where shared values and heritage might meet in contemporary landscapes of familiar origin. While imprecise landscapes expose a disjointed shared history, examining the fallible nature of memory that is constantly reshaping the past. Furthermore, detailed observations of overlooked flora present memory inscribed within the land as a collective unconscious witness to history. Juxtaposed, a conceptual moving image piece considers memory as a landscape and examines the impact of trauma.

The motivation for the exhibition began through the Landscape Collective monthly meetings, with each artist coming from Nottingham Trent University’s photography masters course. Proposed and led by Kathleen Stewart, a dialogue opened up between land and memory allowing for a collaboration connecting our current practices.