palimpsest
ˈpalɪm(p)sɛst/
noun
noun: palimpsest; plural noun: palimpsests
- a manuscript or piece of writing material on which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing.
Continually being regurgitated and passed on, reposted and shared; endless amounts of digital ephemera and imagery now circulate the globe, much like those great rafts of plastic waste which continually circle our oceans, gathering in kilometre long clumps, shadowed by marine life which mistake them for sustaining reefs.
How to separate the good from bad, the aesthetically useful from the mundane and intrusive? What is often perceived to be throwaway or just fleetingly interesting can be transformed into a visually arresting statement by an artists’ intervention.
To edit with a strict protocol seems the only way to deal with and use the vast array of images at a 21st century artists’ disposal; the imposition of strategies, limitations and constraints. When I began making collages three decades ago, it would take months, sometimes years, to find the ‘right’ image, now that quest can be achieved within a few clicks of a trackpad. Today, I filter those easily accessible, seemingly endless possibilities by choosing only those containing a discernible likeness to a friend or a familiar object for instance…a certain curve of a neck; versions of things that I ‘know’; stand-ins, doppelgangers and ciphers. It still takes weeks and months to find just the right image – to transform again into the ‘physical’, information and imagery that had existed only in a digital form.