Adam Forman: How do we remember?

Crossing16.05.2016

The fallibility of longitudinal memory and the memory of fleeting everyday experiences make up the two different parts of this exhibition.  What do we keep of our lives, is this a reminder to ourselves and how much is it how we want others to remember us?  The first is subject to self-selection and the second to the fallibility of others’ interpretation. Both play on the material in this first part of this exhibition.

Helen de Mouilpied was born in 1914 and died in 1987.  Thirty years later the material she kept about herself is presented by the artist through his own memories.  The viewer’s interpretation will confer significance to these memories.  Why was this material kept and other items discarded?  What has determined the selection from the material for this exhibition?  How does this material trigger our own ways of remembering?

The first part of this exhibition is made up of diaries, photos, letters and other physical memories.  Displayed chronologically it makes up the substance of one remembered life.

The second part of the exhibition is the culmination of a photographic project in Hackney.  Fleeting interactions are committed to photographic memory.  The same photograph was taken every day for a year, but not at the same time of day.  The photographer (the artist) was not in Hackney every day; it took nearly eighteen months to accrue 365 photos.  These are displayed in the form of a slide show: Hackney Crossing 365.  The momentary memory of that instant has been captured through photographs, drawings, painting and lithographs.

The passing of time, observing everyday street scenes and surveillance have been recurrent themes in Adam Forman’s work; travel scenes in Imminent Public Spaces (2006) and the CCTV Series (2010).  Being watched, watching and observing are ever present in these images, as is the act of clandestine photography on the closely observed crossing.

Much of the work in the exhibition is for sale.  Open Tues-Fri 1-5, Sat 11-4, Sun 11-5; closed Mon.  Exhibition continues until 11 April.