Zoe Maxwell

My practice explores the vagaries of memory through a constructivist lens, focusing on reconfiguration of recollection over reproducing the past. I became interested in the fallibility of memory after a family member suffered a brain tumour, impacting their ability to recall with the same accuracy. Until then, I perceived truth to be instinctual to the act of remembering.

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Photographs act as a catalyst for my work as they are intrinsically linked to memory, storing of external memories. We also trust photographs to provide a true account of the past.

 

The process I have developed mimics that of episodic memory, past experiences that are recontextualised or decontextualised from initial encoding through recall. Using drawing to introduce new traces I create a scene that derives from the original source material, extended through the handling of paint. The method of her making is an integral part of my practice and forms the roots of each piece. Working in oil paint allows my paintings to remain malleable as the work comes to being. Translating the image through paint inevitably offers alternative possibilities for the scene to shift into another variation of recollection.

 

My paintings provide the viewer with intentional disruptions to the surface, structured lines broken by a dragged mark sit closely next to areas within the painting that have been blurred to obscurity. Attention is diverted across the scene; a strong sense of clarity is deliberately difficult to grasp.

 

Ultimately, my work aims to question the reliability of recollection, starting from doubting the truth we project onto captured image. I want to bring a focus to how time and experience is marked and stored within the painted surface. Constructing confabulations sitting, between the possibilities of what was, what could have been and potentially what could be.