Roxana Allison: Becoming a Memory

About

Untitled Gallery presents Becoming a Memory, a new exhibition of works by Manchester-based photographer Roxana Allison. Becoming a Memory explores the impermanence of memory when confronted with places which are at once both familiar and strange, where traces of self are discovered in the contours of the cityscape, a space imbued with memories, desires, and illusions. As she wanders the city, the artist is open to a world of chance encounters triggered by the spaces and places of the city, a web of decaying memories and unconscious desires. In Becoming a Memory the ephemera of the city evoke a longing to return to childhood surroundings, a past revisited through the act of traversing the streets of Manchester: Becoming a Memory is an ongoing body of work that explores my surroundings as I resettle in the city I was born in and migrated from over 20 years ago. Upon my return just over a year ago and still feeling like an outsider, I have become aware of many changes, such as places that once were but are no longer. This project responds to the constant need to remind myself about my roots and the place I once belonged to. These images will become my memory in a more tangible form as time moves on and will always be within reach, whenever I feel like going back in time... The themes of absence and presence are explored by the artist through the act of photographing areas of Manchester that enable her to retain and re-enact distant memories, resulting in a city becoming a memory. Manchester-born Roxana Allison studied at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where she received her (BA) Fine Art in 2004. Roxana resided in Mexico City until 2008, when she returned to Manchester. Recent group exhibitions include Lost in Transit (2009) at Impressions Gallery, Bradford and Vyner Street Gallery, London, and an exhibition in Somers Town Festival of Cultures (2010), as a member of Centrepoint Collective, a group of artists from Mexico, Spain, France, and the UK. She has also exhibited in photography group shows in Mexico and the USA.