Emma Rochester: Maiden Mother My Heart: Israel 2011

Emma Rochester. Work in Progress - Negev Desert Israel (Video Still). 2011

Drawings on found objects:

Emma Rochester. Near Tul's shop there is a flea market at the end of the day things are left behind: fragments that blow from here to there- an old art print of deers, a babies sweater, one purple pen and a photograph. I pick it up the photograph. I hold it in my hand. The woman looks like my mother. It feels familiar. I could have been this child. This could have been my mother. How does fate decide? I hold it and I walk. I follow the breeze that scatters disregarded items and I stop at the edge of the market that is no more. 2011

Emma Rochester. The day before I was at the market there I found this photograph of school boys. I wonder where this photograph was taken, here in Tel Aviv? In Israel? in Poland? Now here I am in a cab with black leather seats outside of Tul's house in the dark of four am I am going somewhere. I am leaving in the dusty cigarette smell of a cab to Ben Gurion. The driver talks although i nod in a daze half asleep half seeing the lights of the city, the bicycle riders, the bakery preparing the bread, soon it is highways and faces are dimming in memory there are new things to focus on now tickets, queues, passports and the promise of a new place. 2011

Drawings on postcards:

A selection of the maps made whilst walking the Stations of the Cross. These drawings were made on the Via Dolorosa (the pathway which Christ took upon his Crucifixion).

Emma Rochester. Walking the path of thorns, sweat, blood and the olive branch. 2011

Emma Rochester. Walking the path of thorns, sweat, blood and the olive branch. 201

Emma Rochester. Walking the path of thorns, sweat, blood and the olive branch. 2011

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

Emma Rochester

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Philosophy & Biography

Maiden Mother My Heart: Israel 2011

New Work Makers

Re-Imagining Space: Recreating a feminine form of cartography

The Meaning of Method:

About Me

Three is a bicycle in my studio