MEMENTO
Installation views & digital catalogue:
https://ricagallery.com/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/tammy-ratcliff-memento/
The pieces in Memento – hand-pulled prints inspired by observation and memory, photographs, plant clippings and traditional decoration – each represent a souvenir of a significant moment in time for the artist, and collectively serve as a type of personal travelogue of the literal and metaphorical journey she has undertaken over the last year and a half.
This journey includes the bittersweet milestone of having one’s child leave home, the exhilaration of a month spent in the Norwegian arctic, and the painful and frustrating experience of confronting personal illness. This body of work represents the arrival at a point of resolution, where the impressions of place and time – some joyful, some painful – have been digested, distilled and given a fresh new airing, aided by the clarity of hindsight and context.
Objectively, the works stand as sensitive and thoughtful interpretations of nature, employing varied print techniques to render the expansive sensations and rugged beauty of a landscape, or the more intimate investigation of a botanical study. More subjectively, each is coloured with subtle emotional undercurrents that touch alternately on fear and melancholy, admiration and wonder, and hint at the artist’s desire, and the universal impulse, to make sense of one’s place within these intertwined narratives.