‘Pilgrimage and Memory’

Cavagnolo, Turin, Summer 2001.

Curated by

Victor De Circasia

 

The exhibition theme was the investigation on the ‘art of memory’.

The idea of recollection given to objects is very strong; during life we store our experiences in a unique and totally personal infinitive file.

The research carried out by the guest artists is about the meaning of recollection that things rekindle, inviting us to open the doors of our immense coffer: memory.

Paul Statham has created 28 one-minute tracks of found sound and an occasional musical motif that layer cumulatively on to each other, starting from a single sine wave and building in complexity. He compels the listener to try to recall and identify the atmosphere and notes and the apotheosis of lost tracks that, in seconds disappear when it merges with other music.

 

The sounds were collected on Statham’s 800km trek along the Pilgrims route the Camino de Santiago, or Way of Saint James.

By utter chance he found out that artist Daisy Cook had an exhibition featuring 28 small postcard sized paintings taken of the Australian outback but from above in a helicopter.

There is almost a reflective and pondered vision of a journey in which we are limited by the fragments. It is in this light that we see the collaboration between Statham and Cook.

 

The images were filmed and merged on video, mirroring the layering of the music, and presented together.

 

These films have now been lost along with the original paintings which in turn enforces the exhibition title. The music was returned to after 20 years and a new film made from a graveyard Statham encountered on a new pilgrimage walk along the Suffolk shore of the North Sea creating a poignant look at the fading of held memories of our own lives.

The Egyptians believed that you die twice. Once when you take your final breath, and then again, the last time someone says your name. They believe your spirit lives on as long as people kept remembering you.

 

The music is available to purchase as download or signed vinyl style CD from Bandcamp and to stream/purchase from all online streaming platforms

 

https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/paulstatham/pilgrimage-and-memory

 

The video is also available to download from the video library on this site

 

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