a thing that remembers itself (2021)

curated by Holly Rose O’Brien
The Deep End, Glasgow

Lydia Davies | Caitlyn Main | Anna-Rose Stefatou

a thing that remembers itself was an exhibition and publication that brought together the work of Lydia Davies, Caitlyn Main and Anna-Rose Stefatou.

Capturing an ephemeral experience and exploring memory as embodied, yet more than the body, leaking and excessive, and encoded onto objects. Framed in a moment of excess, the show and publication use leftovers, residues, and waste, to pause on dim or fleeting memories. The space

became a theatre for continual dress rehearsals, things held in a delicate balance begin to slip, rupture and blur, enacting the fragility of memory, feelings, and constructions of the self.

The exhibition included Lydia Davies’ audio work Regurgitating (2021) which uses the singing voice as a charged outpouring of the body, exploring its association with crying, shouting, pain and healing. Regurgitating explores the residues of others’ voices in our own; the unwieldy rubble of conversations and phrasing that fill our inner speech. The singing voice attempts to call out, but is reeled back in and broken down into speech as the mouth’s desire to arrest and communicate – to let something out and let something in – is seized in a cycle of regurgitation. Drawing on research into voice, grief and narrative, Regurgitating considers the ability a song has to stage a scene of sentiment, to carry baggage, and to provide an intersubjective site from which to speak.

Anna-Rose Stefatou’s Space Debris (and Other Silent Splinters), (2021) is a moving image work that uses original and found imagery that meditates on space debris, which is simultaneously suspended and colliding in a forgotten orbit. In the work, these orbiting objects stimulate associations with

other fragments of a bygone time. The cosmic meets the everyday, through symbols from Greek myth and folklore, such as the paper kite, the kaiki fishing boat and Karagiozis shadow puppet theatre. An underlying rhythm of words and moving images guide the viewer, as still images punctuate and break the flow. Mirroring this, the sounds of a meditative folk Greek dirge is abruptly disrupted by jazz hi-hat cymbals. By tracing back through collective and personal memory archives, the work explores conflicts between cosmic and cultural loss, as well as our intrinsic need for losslessness. Human, and more-than-human beings, are displaced in time and space; splintered, pixelated and always-becoming.

Encircling the space were Caitlyn Main’s sculptural assemblages in a paused orbit. The nets as tenuous constellations balancing fragile assemblages made from ceramic, plastic, wire and incorporating disposable one-use products. Clusters of matter resembled rudimentary instruments for playing, or ears for listening. Main’s work focuses on a tactile and sensory form of investigation: a process directed by the physicality and metaphorical significance of materials. Her practice grapples with physical remnants, utilizing the ready-made in order to re-examine the habitual.

The publication traces the odyssey of rubbish and accompanies the exhibition. Writing is central to each artist's practice and the publication includes creative writing from each artist on the themes of memory and longing. In addition, it includes collaborative, experimental writing that challenges the conventions of voice, form and authorship.

images: @jenniferagnew_