julian rowe
julian rowe
visual artist
visual artist
...the heart is another country
The focus of my recent work has been on archaeological and ethnographic collections, of the kind that were common in museums fifty
years ago but are now found more rarely. The twist is that although the battered and decaying objects in his “collections” look as
though they are the booty of some long forgotten expedition, they are in fact made by the artist. The Heart is Another Country is
the most recent of these works.
On one level a collection is a metaphor for memory. Museums are a form of collective memory, but a
memory that needs the interpretation of the curator for it to make any sense. The Heart is Another Country seems to have lost that
narrative. There are labels, but they are blank; the significance and purpose of the objects is obscure, as are their age and geographical
origin; we are left wondering who collected them and why. This is the tragedy of memory – it is at the heart of what makes us human,
but suffers a continuous depletion.
On another level, The Heart is Another Country is not a real collection at all but an invention.
Museum collections depend for their integrity upon the notion of authenticity; I made this one myself, so is my collection a fiction?
In a sense, my objects have their own authenticity. After all they are not imitations of other things, but objects in their own right.
On the other hand their outward appearance as collected relics verges on the misleading. Perhaps memories are like that too - a raw
material that is shaped to fit into a personal narrative.
The Heart is Another Country grew out of my reading of Conrad’s "Heart of
Darkness". The novel is an account of a journey into unknown territory in search of an extraordinary individual, the enigmatic trader
Kurtz, whom we are led to believe is an embodiment of civilised virtues. When he is found, Kurtz turns out to have become a corrupt
tyrant. The book can be understood as a condemnation of colonial exploitation, but it also has much deeper resonances. The Heart is
Another Country might be imagined as the remnant of such a journey, a collection of objects plundered from a remote place.
The Heart is Another Country
2007. Site specific installation, 20-21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe.
12 cased sculptures in reservoir
and polyptych in 12 sections
Wood, resin, cotton, jute, wax, wood stain, acrylic, water, pond liner, mixed materials
