Kayla Krepelka

Artist Catalogue

Virtual Exhibition

Remains of A Memory

“Memory is the medium through which we filter present experience and create a sense of time, place and person.”  

- Veronica O’Keane ‘A sense of self; memory, the brain, and who we are’ 2021

This body of work is an exploration into the idea that your sense of self is created through memories. The work follows a search for comfort, nostalgia and familiarity in an unfamiliar circumstance through my early childhood memories.

The process of the work is strongly rooted, both physically and symbolically, in this act of transferring. The act of moving something from one place to another, and in this case, moving memories out of their original context and out of the photo album and into a new space of negotiation and navigation. This installation is made for the viewer to move through the space and experience the multitude of shifts within not only the materiality of the work but also the physicality of the space itself and the accessibility or lack thereof that is present.

The most important element of the work is the journey that one takes within the experience of the space. The movement of a body through the space, observing, reading, touching and feeling. Allowing a sense of embodiment to each viewer. The journey through the space has no start or finish in the sense of that those terms are interchangeable in this case. You as the viewer can access the installation at many different intervals between the pieces and therefore have different perspectives as you move through the installation.

Where the details fade, and you’re left with only the outline, the raw components and the lasting emotion of a memory.

What becomes clearer throughout the process is this notion that memories, no matter their perceived ‘authenticity’ feels real. The emotions that are inextricably linked to a memory remain embedded long after the details of a memory fade.

This concept of legible versus illegible becomes an important part of the installation and its purpose of questioning the accessibility of ‘truth’ or ‘fact’ within memory as you are unable to read all the components present within this setting.

The work interrogates this idea of pieces disappearing, of what is left behind. What remains when you can no longer remember the story or picture their faces or the place? What remains when you can no longer recognise your own memory?