Adam E Justice-Mills

Memory Work - Small Objects Of Desire Project

Wednesday 12th May '10

I started this project in May 2010, by inviting people I knew to come to my studio and bring a "small object of desire" with them. Each object was to have special significance for the person and I asked them to tell me the story of the object. Then I photographed them holding the object. My initial idea for the project was - initially - to show these portrait-style pictures and their stories as a collection, at the EFO summer Open in July. However, when I heard the stories, I realised that it would be inappropriate to present the words and pictures together. Partly it was the intimate nature of the stories, partly that the portrait pictures together with the words were too specific, closed, absolute. In my memory work, I want to present the work as representing everyone's experiences, or at least allow people to write their own interpretations. So now I plan to make "visual poems" from each story, incorporating the picture of the related object together with other images that the associated story suggests to me.

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Adam Justice-Mills uses paint, photos and pixels, creating abstract layered pictures, concentrating on recalled movement, structure and colour. Adam's earlier works in both drawing and photography were highly figurative landscapes and portraits.

Over time, they became more interesting to him as he forgot their context but remembered the emotional significance he attaches to them. What interests him about memories is how they work - what triggers recollection and association of ideas, how much can we remember from a tiny stimulus, why do we remember some things and not others, what makes some things important to remember.

His "memory" drawing series are pen & pastel on paper. They are his exploration of how we form and recall an impression of something or someone, how their significance can be undiminished despite the forgetting of details. The relationship between the artist's memory and the subject is brought out through the repetition of a drawn line, based on a recalled pose or performance.

Adam has recently taken his interest in memory and applied it to his photographic work. He has created two series of "Visual Poems", inspired by people's favourite places or important objects.

Link to EFO here: www.eastfinchleyopen.org.uk

Registered: 2010-03-22

Location: London

http://www.alltradeart.co.uk/adam-e-justicemills
http://mememoryman.wordpress.com/