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MEMORY PALACE

2017-2027

YEAR 1 / 2017

'Memory Palace' is a contemporary multi-disciplinary, time-based project by Sim Luttin that explores the significance of capturing moments and handmaking objects when we live in a complex, globalised time.

Mass production and the ubiquitous uploading of images creates endless clutter and visual noise in the physical and digital world. This project is a conscious intervention that aims to quietly pause, connect, document, and reflect ordinary daily moments. By doing so, Sim will imbue personal meaning into the images and objects, tracing time and revealing aspects of the human condition. The exploration will result in ten yearlong series' of images that will inform the creation of ten collections of handmade objects. The final presentation will culminate in idiosyncratic and tangible 'memory palaces' that span one decade of one person's lived moments in time. 

MOMENTARILY HERE

1 JANUARY - 31 DECEMBER 2017

 

I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.

- Charles Baudelaire

Momentarily Here' is a yearlong photography & art jewellery project. A selection of new work from this exploration was presented in a two-person show titled Keepsake with painter Kirrily Hammond at Bundoora Homestead. The exhibition was featured as part of the Radiant Pavilion exhibition program in Melbourne in August 2017.

PIECE A DAY TIME-BASED PROJECTS

In 2008 Sim began time-based investigations that attempt to find meaning in the everyday.

 

The first project, The Temporary Nature of Things, 2008 idealistically looked for beauty in the everyday, distilling daily observations into 366 jewellery pieces and artist books.

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The second, These Moments Existed, 2013 explored ideas of ambivalence and melancholy, by taking 365 digital photos that inspired a collection of wood and paper contemporary jewellery, which was ambiguous and/or ephemeral 

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The third, It's Always Darkest Just Before Dawn, 2015 was a contemporary multidisciplinary exhibition that explored the significance of handmade objects at a time when people were engrossed in digital culture and mass-produced products. It explored the creation of authentic representations, starting with digital images, photos and video documentation of Sim's surroundings that informed the creation of contemporary art jewellery. 

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The latest iteration, Momentarily Here, 2017 continues Sim's search for meaning in everyday moments that she captures on her camera phone. Her observations don't attempt to capture the perfect moment in a day. On the contrary, given the chaos in the world, this daily habit is an effort to pause, connect and reflect—even for the briefest moment. Without this gesture, most of the moments would go unnoticed and would be lost to time. They are not important signifiers that define one day from another, so much as they are the moment she reconnects with the present and takes note of her surrounds. They are one person's path through life, over one year. In the end, what remains is one version of Sim's lived life; significant or not, recorded on her camera phone, then on social media, and meticulously titled, dated, and archived in folders on her computer before transforming them into printed photographs and jewellery.

We live in a highly mediated society where the online world is arguably replacing a more authentic, tactile one. We constantly upload photos and amass ubiquitous objects to validate our existence and create memories of ideal experiences. We live in the past and create unrealistic expectations for our future, leaving us in a general state of ambivalence and melancholy. 

- Sim Luttin, 2015

Images (top to bottom): Moment #9: Apollo Bay (35. 4 FEB 17); Moment #5 Backyard view (4. 4 JAN 17); Moment #7: Getty (48. 17 FEB 17); Moment #6: Venice beach (47. 16 FEB 17); Moment #3: Magpie (44. 13 FEB 17); all 2017 and all sterling silver, annodised aluminium, glass. Courtesy the artist and Pieces of Eight, Melbourne.

2017 RESEARCH IMAGES

PHOTO A DAY IMAGES - ONE IMAGE EACH DAY OF EACH MONTH IN 2017. NUMBERED, DATED, TITLED AND RECORDED ON INSTAGRAM AND ON THIS WEBSITE. 

JANUARY: 1-31 2017

FEBRUARY: 1-28 2017

MARCH: 1-31 2017

APRIL: 1-30 2017

MAY: 1-31 2017

JUNE: 1-30 2017

JULY: 1-31 2017

AUGUST: 1-31 2017

SEPTEMBER: 1-30 2017

OCTOBER: 1-31 2017

NOVEMBER: 1-30 2017

DECEMBER: 1-31 2017

KEEPSAKE

KIRRILY HAMMOND & SIM LUTTIN

9 AUGUST - 22 OCTOBER 2017

'Keepsake’ was an exhibition of work by Kirrily Hammond and Sim Luttin that documented moments in time—traces captured between night and day, work and home, travelling from one place to another. As a quiet repose from our hectic lives, this exhibition explored the personal, quiet moments found in our urban environments, striving to capture small moments of sublime in the everyday.

 

In a unique combination of painting and jewellery practices, ‘Keepsake’ featured intimate oil paintings on copper by Kirrily Hammond and contemporary jewellery and photography by Sim Luttin.

 

The exhibition was supported by Bundoora Homestead, Gallerysmith and Pieces of Eight Gallery and was presented as part of the contemporary jewellery biennial Radiant Pavilion.

ESSAY by Dr Jessica Neath, July 2017

To read – to see, to understand – is to interpret one’s time. To write. There is no reading that is not technological. — BERNARD STIEGLER, 2009

 

Stiegler’s concept of reading is based on the reciprocity between reader and author formed through the shared technical competency of writing. Reading comes from knowledge of how to write, and the ability to show what was understood by writing in turn. The philosopher argues that humans have always existed with and through technologies but when the speed of technological development confounds social organisation a state of disorientation ensues. In the current intensification of digital and informatic technologies, the “participative aesthetic” between creator and audience is severed because “encoding and decoding operations are delegated in(to) machines.” We receive the outputs of these technologies without memory of how they were created.

 

Do the artists included in this exhibition occlude this “participative aesthetic” by using digital technology to “encode” their content? The atmospheric qualities of Kirrily Hammond’s paintings, and the dimensions of Sim Luttin’s photographs, indicate the use of a camera phone. Both artists have sought to capture those illustrious moments of the suburban everyday by routinely taking quick snapshots. The phone becomes a mnemonic device, in the artists’ words, holding those “quiet moments… before busy takes over.” Yet both artists produce discrete, non-digital, objects from this process that defy the continuous information flows of digital life. Hammond paints detailed fragments of these images in oil pigment on small copper plates. In Luttin’s works the photographic images are both mounted in small picture frames and encased in oxidised sterling silver. The artists call these objects keepsakes. Luttin’s jewellery pieces are to be treasured, keeping the image close to the body. However, these objects are not made in memory of a special person but of a passing moment: a stopgap against the ravenous frenzy of time devouring space and itself. 

 

In these painted and photographic images, many will recognise the back laneways of Northcote, the conglomerate of electricity poles and overgrown creek tracks distinctive of Brunswick, and the miner’s cottages of Carlton. Both artists also picture places further afield, suburbs I do not know the names of, in Germany, Belgium, and the United States. These are the moments glimpsed at twilight on the way home from work, peering out the window of a moving car or train, or walking to the local park. For all the stasis of these images, the rectangular buildings and vertical power poles, there is a sense of mobility, of passing through. Hammond’s most abstract image renders the flat land seen from the car window at the edge of Melbourne in horizontal bands of blue, pink, and Payne’s grey. The sweeping brushstrokes are translucent allowing the copper to shine through, leaving a reflective surface. 

 

The works of both artists bear the marks of their creation. Due to the ubiquitous use of camera phones many viewers will read these works in Steigler’s terms, and feel a reciprocity with the artists. Perhaps this understanding will be shown with an embrace of their own quiet moments and reclamation of time. 

KEEPSAKE ARCHIVE

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CATALOGUE

With essay by Dr Jessica Neath

PDF Download

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EXHIBITION

Two-person show by Kirrily Hammond & Sim Luttin

DATE: 25 August - 22 October 2017

WHERE: Bundoora Homestead, 7 Prospect Hill Drive, Bundoora

ENTRY: Free

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OPENING

DATE: 25 August 2017, 2-4pm

WHERE: Bundoora Homestead, 7 Prospect Hill Drive, Bundoora

ENTRY: Free

 

ARTIST TALK

DATE: 25 August 2017, 3-4pm

WHERE: Bundoora Homestead, 7 Prospect Hill Drive, Bundoora

ENTRY: Free

 

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© SIM LÜTTIN, 2024

Sim respectfully acknowledges the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, the traditional custodians of the land on which I create and exhibit art. I pay my respects to Elders past and present, as well as to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the wider Melbourne community and beyond. Indigenous sovereignty has never been ceded. I acknowledge that I work and live on the country on which Members and Elders of The Wurundjeri people and their forebears have been custodians for many centuries and on which Aboriginal People have performed age-old ceremonies of celebration, initiation and renewal. I acknowledge their living culture and unique role in this region's life.

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