Bronwyn Matthews

VIRTUAL TOUR

ARTIST CATALOGUE

I can feel the palpitating throb of your wandering eyes

A lost stream of existence entered, igniting a forgotten flame of being. A miracle of hope began melting in my palms, forging streams of moisture that reveal the knowledge that was hidden from me. It began as an appraisal towards conceptions of discovered and unremembered familial relationships. I embarked on freezing expired foods as it felt that I was extending inconsistent efforts of care or profound memory. Comfort lies in the bottom shelf of my freezer. Through freezing, I preserve what is uncontrollably everchanging, making a memory congruent and contained. In addition to revisiting and documenting my grandparents ancestral coloured-adorned homes, I witnessed a shift at the mid-year mark as I found myself losing sight of the visual gratification, I immersed myself into.

Distance made my heart grow in different as I began reckoning with my motive of positionality. When I return to my grandparents, it takes arrangement and preparation which becomes out of question when predisposed tendencies of unfulfilled fatigue resurface. This occasion enabled a transition of impromptu visual collection. I began documenting the remnants of someone else’s debris. I see what you choose to look away from. I crave the insignificance of forgotten temporalities. This photographic installation exists as an assemblage of fragmented histories – some discarded, some monumentalised, some safeguarded but all gathered to fabricate a narrative in motion. The combination of unstudied with structured photographs, fabricates a conversation of duality. Through my lens objects become monumentalised as they exist as emblems of significance in my world but as articles of impertinence outside of it. 

My final exhibition exists as a form of self-analysis, self-critique and exercise in self- portraiture. I have imagined my own landscape in the arrangement of my photographs that speak their own objective actualities but surrenders itself to a degree of interpretation accustomed to the viewer. The desired impact is to be attracted and repelled, to be able to taste but not fully swallow. The most salient aspects of my graduate photographic show include monumentalization, preservation, remembrance and juxtaposition. I have witnessed my existence in past lives of unremembered truths, that I have chosen to reclaim through a vignette of familiarity and nostalgic retell. Stark imagery of juxtaposition follow softer instances of chance – it resists simple reading but rather provides clues that hold implications when in conversation with written observations. 

My imagery revels in ambiguity and mystery, lending oneself to heightened documentary where atmosphere and anticipation are key elements. My intention is to command attentiveness and a space for contemplation, as an amalgamation of moments encapsulated through my frame. Every photograph included possesses a certain degree of value in my eyes that can be different to that of the viewer. What deserves to be preserved over discarded. What we choose to forget over intuitively remembering. What we hold onto over letting go of. My practice appraises notions of found and lost familial relationships, in which I am an active agent in the creation of my practice.