Rosalind Goss

Exhibition Statement

A few years ago I began to scribble down things said to me, and by me, on scraps of paper. This was a time of upheaval in my life. Words became immensely important. They were sometimes poignant, mundane, melodramatic, but all very real. Reading these quotes helped me face the realities they described. Getting the exact words down on paper somehow gave me a sense of containment, a way of understanding what was happening, a way of encapsulating in a few words the vastness of my experience. My intent was not an artistic one.

Between November 2004 and April 2007, I had written down over one thousand quotes. This show represents a selection of the things said between November 2004 and October 2005. The quotes range from the innocent queries of a child to sophisticated comments about life and relationships.

About a year after I began transcribing the quotes, I began to organize them chronologically. I also did a few drawings. By this time I had some distance and saw the words as points of departure for a story to be told. While writing down the words had been cathartic, the act of art-making was not. The work was done with commitment and tenderness. It was a vulnerable process, but no more so than any other honest artistic endeavour. I chose to work small, as I wanted the art to be a quiet experience, not an overwhelming one. I created the images in simple boxes so that each piece would have its own contained space. I wanted the viewing experience to be slow and intimate, a recognition of each individual piece.

I chose materials and imagery I thought would enhance qualities of familiarity, mystery, and depth. I used mylar to create a top layer, partially exposing and covering up the images on the kraft paper. Various layers of memory, and possible hidden meanings can be read. I used old clippings from inherited picture files of the 1950s that belonged to my father, an illustrator. I also found some Life magazines from 1953, the year I was born. The images from the fifties seemed to resonate with the words I had been collecting. This is the time I grew up in; a time, pre-feminism, when the media portrayed happy, clean-cut families, compliant housewives, and romantic couples. This was where my early dreams were forged. I now have both a nostalgic and sarcastic response to these images. These old clippings suited my experience more than found imagery from the computer ever could. I chose them spontaneously, in the same way that I draw, making unconscious and not always logical connections between the images and words. October, 2007.