Memory + Intimacy + Theory + Design

The following are a few artists/ designers who have looked into the idea of memory in relation to design..

Emily Smith creates sculpture and installation pieces. Primarily using plaster casts, her work reveals a constant re-appropriation of methods as diverse as carpentry, ceramics and needlework. Influenced by childhood memories, nostalgic spaces are suggested through symbolic objects which represent a particularly subjective interaction with the memory of a significant person or place. Subtle overlaying of projections onto sculpture builds up a visual palimpsest and restructures the narrative of each object. Emily’s work is concerned with loss, memory and trace of an absence. View interview

UNTITLED, projection on plaster casts, casts approx 10 x 15 cm, 2006

BS: Your work often appears as if it reflects time gone by. Several of your pieces have an aged quality about them. Is that something you strive for? Or am I just interpreting the works that way? What do you think of my observation?

ES: Yes there is certainly an aged quality, like a thin film of dust on objects which picks up fingerprints. In recent years I have been working with objects that have not been touched for many years so there is a kind of archaeology to the process of rediscovery. In earlier works the manner of construction is deliberately crude to suggest former use and clues to their construction. I am very interested in traces left by my own hands through the process of making, as well as the traces of a former use present on all objects, which give clues to who may have touched the object.