Melissa Furness
There is a paradox that emerge when we are confronted with
ruins. Our thinking splits into two paths—one that leads backward
in time and another that travels forward, paths that are wandered
on simultaneously. The result is the creation of a complex
alternative present. We are pointed toward a distorted world in
which even what is now new will outlive us in some form of odd
decay for other generations to translate.
These fragments are leftovers of a public history, which we then
make personal through contemporary experience. They are sites
from which life has departed, though the discourse surrounding
their former occupation remains.
My work explores the life of the art object and the environment it
inhabits, building a visual dialogue that extends from the internal
to the external by testing the limits of the narrative that exists
within and beyond it, through process and intervention. Artifacts
are created and eroded as weather, time, and human interaction
raise questions regarding the nature of external forces on the
object in the formation of its present history.
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