Something to Remember / Fractured Narratives
2018
2018 Artist book. 1/1 Digital print on silk and cotton, bound and stitched with cotton, pencil and paint on cover
Something to Remember is a collaborative exhibition with Alexis Neal which references Louise Bourgeois' artist books 'Ode to Forgetfulness' and 'Nothing to Remember'.
Finkenauer's works for 'Something to Remember' include a series of one-off screen prints, embossed prints, silver-foil stamped text works, a digitally printed, textile artist book, a macramed, soft-sculptural installation and an exhibition text titled Fractured Narratives, which you can read an excerpt from below. This body of work considers issues of voice and visibility, knowledge gleaned from the unsaid, and the impact of implicitly gendered narratives on collective perspectives.
This work was exhibited in Gus Fisher Gallery in 2018, and travelled to The Suter Art Gallery in 2019.
...An excerpt from the exhibition text 'Fractured Narratives', by Elke Finkenauer
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Specificity oozes through layers that overlap, connect, inform and are informed.
The words textile, texture and text derive from the Latin texere meaning to weave, to join, to fit together. A single thread merges with other threads to form something elaborate, something constructed. Afterwards it becomes impossible to distinguish the thread from the construction.
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Tim Ingold describes three types of line — a thread, a trace and a cut/crack/crease. A thread is a line of physical substance that connects or constitutes a surface; a trace is a mark on a surface that echoes an action; and a cut/crack/crease is a rupture. Whilst the former two are purposeful, the third conveys a sense of treachery — the breach of a surface, an empty form. Skin lines could fit into this third category. Traces of habitual gestures enfolded into the skin’s surface. Temporal and enduring lines which narrate a trajectory from past to future.
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What does it take for a self to be disclosed — is it an act of language? Yours, or someone else’s? Can an undisclosed self be authentic? How does one think the unheard and unarticulated?
Subtext, the unsaid beneath the text, the invisible threads and traces.