Victoria Haviland

I have completed recently my MA in fine art at Wimbledon College of Art.

I have been inspired to make art originally because my family ran a busy hotel with tourists from all over the world constantly in our private spaces.   I sought refuge in my studio and was able to find peace solitude and privacy amongst my practice.  Art has been a great passion and has saved me from myself.

My recurring themes have been: -

Memory, memorial, death, identity

The British Folk Arts

Memories, here........... and there

'With the hand of my heart from the face of my remembrance; until what I wish for be unveiled and appear in sight out of its secret place'. Le Geoff.

I explore relationships influenced by social history, memory and memorial. Perspectives are orientated between poles of the 'real' and the 'imagined'.

Works contain clues of intention and expectation provided by past eras for the investigation into unreachable and unexplored worlds.

I enjoy a theory of philosopher Husserl, that memory is a 'perfect circle of presentation'. I seek to realise within works the fact that if the radius of a circle is infinite, then the circumference will be a straight line.

I seek evidence of lost or forgotten companionships within sourced objects and assemble them within light based works. I attempt to pose metaphor and elucidate concepts of memorial. Connections between memorial and Spiritualism are explored.

Mirrors are believed by some to ‘contain souls of the dead’; playing with mirrors and video equipment encounters a fluxus of light. The mirror is perhaps, a portal linking this life and the next. It becomes a tool for rendering visualisations of the 'after-life'.

I seek loss results in communications with the ‘other side’ that contribute as niaeve gestures towards the deceased. I seek to define and conflate differences and similarities between the act of medium-ship and of memorial.

On long solitary walks, I pass graveyards, litter, people, dogs. I absorb myself into the intensity of the approaching and passing of other walkers after which I loose myself to the silence, a back drop for memorial and for all that is lost.

Through musings on the landscape I am able to remember and forget simultaneously. I sense memories exist within the trees and grasses, I can see them, they are invisible. I am reminded to remember that some memories are forgotten. Perhaps they exist; awaiting reclamation, suspended in animation within another dimension.

A device is installed that could charm melancholic response.

Victoria Haviland 2012

victoria_haviland@yahoo.com