Emma Rochester: Specific Works

Emma Rochester. Venus with her interrupted life. Held hostage between whore and beauty: Magdalene and Mary. This inferior conjunction stills the apple trees planted in her sacred grove. Their growth now slowed as they sleep swaying in a sacred garden of puerisque. 2011

Venus with her interrupted life… is an installation that explores the sensory experience of place and the eroding history of ancient Tamasus, Cyprus. It is anticipated that the work will consist of a projection onto the wall with an alter set up directly underneath the projected image. The altar would consist of a thin plank of wood raised to about hip height. Upon this altar small apple trees and apples would be positioned. The apples would then gradually extend beyond the altar up the wall of the gallery following the edge of the projected image. As apples can tend to smell after two weeks it is anticipated that I will either create moulds of apples or find a means to remove the odour by soaking the apples in ink or plaster.

This work results from an Artist in Residence at the Cyprus College of Art in June/July 2011. The focus of my work at the residency was to undertake walks in Hellenic pilgrimage sites for the goddess Aphrodite/Venus and map these journeys. Only the ruins of the major temples for She of Ten Thousand Names (one of the many epithets for Aphrodite) have been preserved. Many sites of veneration have been lost and archaeologists return to Cyprus every year on the trail of the Goddess. Interestingly, archaeologists work with the same grid system as the map placing markers and string in checkerboard patterns across the landscape.

In Venus with her interrupted life… I map Tamasus an ancient apple grove that was once an erotic pilgrimage site for Hellenic Greeks venerating Aphrodite. Today it is a seldom-visited tourist site. A lone guard sits in a pine hut complete with electric kettle and in the still heat of Cyprus it is as if the very site of the temple has been and will continue to be empty for decades. Alone to wander through the ruins I hold a pen to the sacred apple and begin to orbit the remains of the altar. Here in this outdoor temple men and women copulated in erotic pleasure to bring into their bodies the sensuality that only Aphrodite can afford.

In the stifling heat the sensations of the body are paramount focusing on the practice of drawing landscape into my mapping practice I question: How do I walk through a landscape such as this? On a path that rotates the altar time and time again how will the translation of my experience result? I am aware of each small breath of wind, the feel of grass, the pale colour of the rock, and Aphrodite as mistress of my mind. The walk becomes meditative deepening the physical sensation of place and deepening the insertion of the self within it.

This moving image with its clockwise and anti clockwise direction is indicative of my practice. Using the drawing pencil as an apparatus to position the self within landscape. I create drawings, which define my behavioral movement as I explore terrains. The resulting drawing acts as a map. Interestingly this map does not provide any actual indication of my geographical location. There are no markers, no north and south points, latitudes or longitudes there is only a line of continuous movement.

If one was to mix all the drawings I have made to date there would be no actual way to see which drawing was undertaken in which environment. There is only an expression/or trace of the movement through a place. This ambiguity generates a sensation of memory and the need for an oral tradition or documentation as only the person who drew the line can remember where it was made. In this way I position myself within a drawing practice that becomes a poetic, evocative and feminine expression of geographic diagrams. Venus with her interrupted life thus becomes both a documentation of the process of making works as well as a highly textured new genre installation.

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

Specific Works

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