Re: Place #1
by Mandy Williams


Many of my projects have been about place. This project is about the different locations mentioned in my teenage diaries. Though curious about these places after such a long time, the process is not about nostalgia, more the need to create a small action to acknowledge the passage of time, to overlay the past with a gesture from the present. Before I leave for Sussex I tear out the selected diary pages, roll and tie them up with ribbon. I want them to look inviting, to provoke somebody’s curiosity. Each page mentions a particular place and when I go there I’m thinking about the story that was written all that time ago but also experiencing it in the present – seeing a new film, eating a meal, walking along a stretch of beach. I take photographs of the location, the people passing by and the diary pages as I leave them. Some pages aren’t meant to be found, they are swept out to sea or placed deep in the landscape. Some have been left very publically and I would wait to see who would find them and whether they’d be curious enough to pick them up and read them.


One item of artwork shown.