AMY ASH

2018

This ongoing body of work uses the language of experimental chemistry and mechanics to comment on the ways in which we construct memory and belonging. In combination with gestural imagery of bodies at work and in motion, Conducting Ourselves explores the physicality of belonging with copper as a conductor of meaning, both as a shape-memory alloy and a component of the human biological make-up. The imagery is borrowed from local archives of factory workers, dancers and participants in educational settings, including documentation from my own workshops, in order to capture instances where a sense of community, as well as muscle memory and bodily learning are engaged. Conducting Ourselves, experiments with chemistry to produce copper sulphate crystals within the paint and ink pigments. The crystals, like memories harboured, shift, mutate and grow on the surface of the work in subtle ways long after the image is created.

Although the research and development spanned several months, this body of work was refined during a residency at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, in Fredericton. Conducting Ourselves was originally exhibited in Be/Longing a three-artist show at Gallery On Queen, in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. Also part of the exhibition, Chantal Khoury’s Home and Haven and Maja Padrov’s Articulate.

THANK YOU: Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Gallery On Queen, Chantal Khoury & Maja Padrov

in which we remind ourselves of that which we already know

2018

Intuition

Serendipity

Endurance

Chance

Trusting in the way things are / will be, and persevering.

reaching — touch, touch, touch,

making new, fresh, free.

Ignoring boundaries, embodying inertia and recognising choreography in everyday routine

moving to celestial grooves

Ink and acrylic on St. Armand paper

2015

Engram (noun)

a physical alteration thought to occur in living neural tissue in response to stimuli, posited as an explanation for memory. Providing a physical basis for the persistence of memory; it is also referred to as a memory trace.

Facade (noun)

An exterior wall, or face, of a building. The front facade of a building contains the building’s main entrance.

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This work was created during the Truth, Lies and Lore residency with the support of the Banff Centre for the Arts and the Peter MacKendrick Endowment Fund for Visual Artists.

Cyanotypes on graph paper from layered found negatives, with hand stitching.

6.5x8 inches each

2015

She worked with her hands.

You could tell that; even despite the fancy clothes. 

..besides, I feel like I remember hearing that.  I’m sure that’s true.

In the Way that Worked is a poem dedicated malleability of memory, to the gaps in between the collection of things we ‘know’.  But as knowledge is a shape shifter, the things we ‘know’ are sometimes also the gaps in between.

In the Way that Worked is part of a larger project called Pot of Gold and was conceived and installed during the Truth, Lies and Lore residency at The Banff Centre for the Arts.

Thank you to The Banff Centre for the Arts and the Peter MacKendrick Endowment Fund for Visual Artists.

installation: hand tinted silver gelatin print from found negative, found photographs, stitching, birch bark, sheet copper.

size: variable (roughly 1m x 1m)

2017

Layers of found images (drawings and cyanotypes) made from disparate collections--all gifts from people who could not throw them away. Connections are made which sit somewhere just beyond reality.

cyanotype, acrylic, coloured pencil and ink on paper.

Cyanotypes and image transfers on St Armand paper. Each piece is constructed from found and scavenged images.

2015-2016

studies for a different remembering is a series of collages which situate themselves on the periphery of memory, knowledge and narrative.

Found photographs. paint. ink.

A portion of the title is borrowed from Dziga Vertov.

2015

This series of small cyanotypes is part of the larger body of work, Pot of Gold.

Cyan blue is the colour of the past in preparation for the future. It represents permanence and references opportunity. It does not exist in the present; already obsolete, it is a mark of absence and sometimes even fiction.

The origin of the negatives is unknown; they have been edited, re-imagined and reconstructed as cyanotypes. This series has no order, it can be arranged and rearranged allowing the legacy to quietly shift.

This work was made possible with the support of The Banff Centre for the Arts and the Peter MacKendrick Endowment Fund for Visual Artists.

Cyanotypes from mid-twentieth century negatives and hand stitching.

each 4x6 inches or approx 60 inches as installation

2015-2016

Of Echoes and Engrams comes out of the larger body of work, Pot of Gold.

echo

1. a sound or sounds caused by the reflection of sound waves from a surface back to the listener.

2. a close parallel to an idea, feeling, or event.

Normally the echo is not heard as the reflected sound becomes merged with the original sound.

engram

1. a memory-trace; a permanent and heritable physical change in the nerve tissue of the brain, posited to account for the existence of memory.

While the existence of neurologically defined engrams is not significantly disputed, their exact mechanism and location remains a mystery despite decades of persistent scientific focus.

Silver Gelatin enlargements of found negatives, each frame depicting the same woman posed in different settings, fragmented entirely in the darkroom using only analogue methods.

each 11x14 inches

This work began at the Truth Lies and Lore residency and was made possible only by the support of the Peter MacKendrick Endowment Fund for Visual Artists and The Banff Centre for the Arts.

Ongoing from 2012

Reckless Abandon is salvage project. It consists of an ever-growing collection of playful interventions and illustrations on found photos—most of which were unwanted and on their way to the dump.

found photographs, acrylic, ink, gouache, thread.