“Places I Can’t Get Back” felt, to me, like an ode to loss.
Recreating my family home through the tinted glasses of time – an odd mix of nostalgia and detachment – was a sort of remedy to this. The concept of time became a driving force for this project; knowing that I will forget the specific texture of the kitchen tiles under my socks, and I will forget the tone of warm sun pouring through the windows, and I will forget the exact sound the floorboards made.
To picture somebody else living where I spent a decade of my existence still feels wrong, even 2 years after moving. This is why it felt so important to me to capture it exactly as I remember. In order to do this, I didn’t use any reference images, instead creating the floorplan of the downstairs areas of the house from my own memory.
My process, as per usual, tended to work off the philosophy of sticking materials together and hoping for the best. The rug is a weave of different wools I had lying around, the curtains are old scraps of fabric and the walls are made from cardboard I found on somebody else’s desk. Having to craft each element individually in some ways felt like a strange ritual in which I tried to remember exactly how it looked and felt and then placing it in the room where it belonged, as if it was then compartmentalised in my brain.
The finished project is a culmination of a week’s work, a lot of cardboard and a bitter combination of memories that come with the breakdown of stability.
