Siilk Gallery

In the digital age how does found imagery from the past composed of familiar yet unresolved photographs and the physicalities they represent serve as mnemonic devices able to trigger emotions and deeply concealed memories? Using Derrida’s notion of the “arkhe” this series examines internal and external memory and to what extent existing archives of experience can be interrogated and adapt to newly discovered evidence that retraces our origins, forcing new space to be made to accommodate previously forgotten or suppressed vestiges that can inform our present. Using Bergson’s thoughts on perception and memory and a ‘plurality of moments’ it also questions the veracity of existing memory and beliefs in the face of new knowledge and our ability to reconfigure our identity and reconsider supposed concrete relationships with the past. At the moment we view them, these images exist simultaneous as both new and old, they both reaffirm and shatter existing ways of knowing, forcing us to confront the mneme and anamnesis developed over a lifetime and entering, momentarily, ‘pure perception’.

Siilk Gallery, Athens Greece, February 1~28, 2020:

“We are Siilk Gallery: we give exposure to international photographers who are under-represented within the traditional system. we curate, interview and showcase photographers from around the world at our space in Athens, Greece & here, our online publication. . .Our curation focuses on work which is quality, progressive and contemporary. We look for artists who are provocative, incendiary, seductive and who challenge the traditions of art. At SIILK GALLERY we promote originality, free expression and are against banality and the commercialization of human creativity.”

. . .[text and series underdevelopment, full details on the project page]