‘Retrace: Scripting Memory' an exhibition by Emily Smith

About

As the winner of the Site Darbyshire award, Emily Smith was offered an exhibition at Stroud Valleys Artspace (SVA) and the manufacture of new work from Darbyshire Framemakers. Rather than simply the presentation of a cheque, the award offers a form of mentoring service from Mark Darbyshire and SVA in the form of a dialogue with the winner in order to realise work which previously could only have existed at the proposal stage. The series of work that the award will enable Emily Smith to realise is itself an enquiry into the systems of realisation, how thoughts are realised in form. She is using the award as an opportunity to further her interest in how language, speech and writing both create and obfuscate meaning by developing her ‘writing machines'. The work questions objective and singular memory, and investigates how the past is recalled through both visual memory and physical trace. Alongside the exhibition there will be a series of talks, discussions and poetry readings on each Sunday during the exhibition. A particular highlight will be a talk on Sunday 8th March at 11am by Brian Dillon, author of a memoir, In the Dark Room, and the UK editor of Cabinet.