Glancing out the back: artist's memories and research

Abstract

[Abstract]: When storying memory we bring from ourselves aspects of dreams, images from our human psyche and glances out the back as windows to our worlds. This paper describes and analyses the role memory can play in describing the process of review and reflection that engages us as we go about the business of being artists. We create ourselves through memory. I have been taken by the role of memory in the processes of biography, autobiography and notions of portraiture. These methods are critical aspects that enable us as artist researchers to describe our experiences of the world as we see them. As Narcissus Quagliata argues, “the object of creating artwork is primarily twofold: to create a dialogue between ... self and life via the medium (a philosophical activity) and to communicate”. This is the way we work when we are involved in sharing our perceptions of what it is to be an artist, and I argue that we can do this very effectively by wanting “to make portraits of individual lives.” Central to this way of working, and to all aspects of research that involves storying people’s lives, is the role and the articulation of memory. In the belief that investigation is the business of everyone, especially artists, I argue that we need to recognise and tap our autobiographical memory as a rich inner resource of memory for people, objects, places, events, feelings, all of those details that enable us to probe into the story of our lives. Each of the visual and verbal narratives of praxis used to illuminate and illustrate issues raised in this paper draw on the work of Shelagh Morgan, however due to the nature of the materials sourced, page numbers will not be indicated.