Under Construction please go directly to http://emmarochester.blogspot.com for an overview of Australian projects
Emma Rochester
August 2011
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Statement, Biography and Curriculum Vitae
RMIT Drawing Department. 2008.
Pages
Philosophy & Biography
Art and the felt experience of place
A practice of walking, pilgrimage and expedition
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Re-Imagining Space: Recreating a feminine form of cartography
When one looks at a map one sees place devised and redefined into a strict grid like system with roads and landscape marked out in different coloured lines. The grid (upon which the map is constructed) with its hard lineal structure not only signifies place but is also a cultural reminder of how society contains, defines and understands place. Terrain is reduced to simple lines that were once devised and decided upon by men.
While cartography may once have been designed to demacate place, somewhere along the line mapping became mistaken and intermeshed with place. Maps became formailsed, accurate, exact, unquestionable in some cases, easier to understand than the place itself. In sum, maps replace place.
But what if place, terrain, territory and spaces could be represented in more personally fulfilling and gender inclusive ways? What if one could separate the unquestioning belief in the digital navigation system and the two dimensional fold out map, look up, look down, gaze around and see that place can be defined in a myriad of ways, and that what we now have to define place is not necessarily the best form of construct. What if place could be represented in a way that was personally meaningful and reflective of the individual experience rather than of the man who originally invented or created the map?
The Meaning of Method:
Through both performative and static works Emma Rochester inhabits the space in order to create a new dialogue of how place can be presented and invites the viewer to extend their imagination beyond the line of what is presented.
Walking through the space with pen on paper or even something as simple as drawing a line by walking. Emma Rochester creates drawings that can be seen as layered memories of place. These are often considered seismographic as they simultaneously map the movement of the artist through place.
The performative walk also becomes one of assessment. Of understanding ones location within the space dependent upon the point on which one stands on the line: Like the map which has its basis in scientific assessment and determination of place so too does the walk becomes a reflection on orientation and ones position in relation to not only the line the artist walks but also in terms of mapping as an entirety of lines that culminate in grid like structures.
WIthin the performative aspect of Emma Rochester's work the line transforms beyond its' delineation on the floor to exists between the footsteps and the movement she makes as she moves around the space.
The artist often dressed in black or in tutus -of a corresponding colour to the surroundings- no longer represents herself as an individual but becomes a generic signifier of all women as she inserts in feminine into the map making tradition
About Me
- emmarochester
- Faced with binary opposites of restraint and expression: awareness and automation: binding and unbound: wrapped and unwrapped. I traverse two main areas in my work: Cartography and Monologue.
Three is a bicycle in my studio
RMIT Drawing Department. 2008.