Sophie Gough
Dwelling: In Ruined Time
Summary
Dwelling: In Ruined Time is a body of research that explores a practice of place-making with fragmented forms to re-present one’s notions of self-hood in the present. It posits the choice of holding on to an object as a coping mechanism for feelings of losing parts of oneself. Using salvaged architectural ephemera taken from previous residences that Sophie once lived in, this project grieves the loss of a home in a destructive reality.
The studio holds space for her gestures of self-preservation within which new intimacies are forged between herself and the mineralogical compositions of the objects she collects. These fragments direct her active methods of worrying, haunting and re-membering to engage with the development of works that assemble her architectonics of creative writing, drawing, painting, photography, and sculpture. Sophie continually sediments with these processes using the tactic of mnemonic assemblages through which she fabricates and assembles mixed media articulations of home to re-situate a sense of herself in the studio.
Additional info
Sophie Gough is an artist and researcher that lives and works in London.
Recently, her work has focused on the application of a haptic archaeological excavation of the material closeness felt between oneself and the materials with which they surround themselves. During this unearthing, the alchemical and affectual experiences felt with the objects being exhumed is favoured over the objects themselves. Through this somatic and psychical line of inquiry, she has come to find a source of comfort among the elemental materials of copper, lime (calcium hydroxide), graphite, (carbon) within which new intimacies are forged.
Theoretically influenced by contemporary object oriented ontologist Timothy Morton and eco-feminist thinkers such as Donna Harroway and Karan Barad , Sophie revisits themes of agency, affect, home, identity and loss from an expanded perspective within this research. Through the lens of a new and more-than-human vantage point in her research, she haunts, worries and re-members with the materiality of objects to re-present herself with other agents in the studio. Working through gestures of often site-specific material treatments, this project investigates the materiality of objects misremembered from her past to re-situate and ground a sense of herself in our ruined present.
Image: Installation of Map of Woes, 2022. 2m x 3m. Graphite (carbon derivative) transfer paper, cartridge paper and pencil overlaid resting on plaster fragments of the limestone lintels. London. May 2022
Confessional Topography 3
Map of Woes
A repeated attempt
To return home.
The graphite rests,
Unsettled.
Of breath like thinness.
It feels at odds with what it will become.
Paradoxically light and weighted.
Sedimenting on a bed of relations.
Image: Detail of studio assemblage of copper mesh fragments made from a wooden skirting board and plaster cast lintels. Copper mesh, plaster, studio wall and sunlight. Dims variable. London, July 2022
Confessional Topography 4
To feel solidarity is to feel haunted
It’s ontological haunting
Found(ing) in this anxious region
Of caring sensibly.
Something like agency – emanating.
It’s spectre, is it still buried?
Confessional Topography 5
Widening the Self
Carbonating.
That, which doesn’t completely know itself there
- Unheimlich.
It’s grasping. Gasping.
In the restlessness of time.
I dwell.
Images: Fabricated lintels bathing in studio rays. White plaster casts (lime, cement, gypsum, and talc) and blue and grey alginate casting media. Dimensions variable, Battersea studio view, London. April 2022
Confessional Topography 1
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I begin with worrying and a lintel
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I then start haunting its disaster.
The art of losing isn’t too hard to master.
Finally, I re-member ,‘tis no settled matter.
Confessional Topography 2
To a Limestone Lintel
Above the opening it carries the weight of a heavy structure
The collapse of which would close the opening.
Not culturally discarded, but culturally excavated.
Relationships, sedimented.
Found in the garden before we left
Now basking in studio rays
Precariously poised
Where do I go from here?
Image: Battersea studio view of assemblage of four copper mesh fragments taken and abstracted from a wooden skirting board. July, 2022
Images:
(1) Detail of Ruin Study 6, (with plastic sheeting) 2022 90cm x 60cm Acrylic limewash and mixed media on canvas, April 2022
(2) Detail of Ruined study 8, 2022.100cm x 100cm, Acrylic, limewash and mixed media on canvas
(3)Detail of Ruined study 8, 2022.100cm x 100cm, Acrylic, limewash and mixed media on canvas
(4) Copper mesh sculpture 56x44x10cm. It is captured here coming to life in fleeting moments amidst the day light and shadows in the studio. London, June 2022
