Annette Pugh: Somewhere Never Travelled

About

“somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond”
E.E.Cummings, 1931

At what point does a photograph become a memory?

This question reminds us all of the preciousness of time, of how our reminiscences are entangled with the visual image; of how recollection can be shaped, firstly by a camera lens and then by the truths and untruths of the artist's hand.

In this exhibition Annette presents us with images spanning place and time. Isolation and location underpin her body of work.  Figures stare out from re-edited and re-imagined histories. Unpopulated locations become the stage for unseen events. Stoic headland palms and the forgotten corners of pleasure gardens are Annette’s obsession and the watcher or photographer is as intriguing to the artist as the subject itself.

Annette’s work deals with moments; small, insignificant or forgotten. She re-records, alters and re-presents these moments, compelling us to consider a past which may not always be as it first appears. The paintings presented here are images of discovery, of collective memory and imagined destinations. They speak of journeys, personal and physical, of aspiration and dreams.

In short the artist asks the viewer to discover the familiar, but tempts us to travel in our minds to somewhere that is ’gladly beyond.’