CORRESPONDENCE

Having nice time. Just off to sit on sea front. Been and booked for two shows this morning. Weather very warm, see you I hope next Sunday 6.25pm.

Correspondence involves collecting, cataloguing, archiving and research in order to rephotograph tourist postcards from the late 1960s onwards. The postcard sender's message is adopted as the title for each piece, everyday words and memories that find a life beyond that of their original propriety. The act of reworking these images and applying a strangers words, is a conversation (a correspondence) with the past.

2007 - present

This is were we go in the water you would love it the sun shines all day, hope you are feeling better.

Having a lovely holiday. Weather being kind. Hope your new pal is getting on ok. Pippa is enjoying herself.

I began the project Correspondence inspired by a collection of postcards which I discovered at Greenwich market. The cards seemed reminiscent of my own childhood, late 20th century examples using print processes to achieve saturated tones suggesting quasi-Mediterranean landscapes. In opposition to this I re-photographed the views out of season to amplify a sense of melancholy and incorporated text from the cards as titles for my work. The approach highlights a contradiction. The destinations appear drab and unappealing, yet holidaymakers had a great time there. My interpretations challenge the sentimental, nostalgic attributes that the originals express.

I included both the original image and the sender’s text connoting the idea of appropriating another person’s memory. I exhibited photographs and published postcards that could be taken away and used by visitors to the exhibition. My aim was to create an ongoing echo of the original postcard, a repeating, functional loop where the audience experiences the work and sends one of the new postcards as a record of their visit. Chronological change between past and present is evident through a direct visual comparison of the two images. A cultural shift is inferred too, that society was manifestly different to the one we experience today. This raises questions such as what happened to the society depicted in the original postcards? What became of the original sender or recipient? The work, therefore, portrays evidence of temporality and mortality with the depicted locations being haunted by the past.

Postcards, being commonplace mass-produced items that are relatively easy to find are a form of cultural readymade. They continue to find a place in my practice, providing a canvas for exploring ideas, affording processes that are immediate and encourage spontaneity. Postcard collector Jeremy Cooper states that they, ‘invite handling, they are inexpensive, and are often available in multiples’ (Cooper, 2019). He quotes artist Susan Hiller’s attraction to postcards in an essay on the film maker Andrei Tarkovsky, ‘I like to work with materials that have been culturally repressed or misunderstood’. Like second-hand photographs or books, used postcards retain an aura of pre-ownership, they are haunted materials.

I was aware of a growing artistic movement incorporating re-photography and appropriated imagery featuring work made from found photographs. Correspondence not only appropriates images but memory as well. I rarely had family holidays as a child, so any personal memories the postcards conjured were bogus. I recognised details from the time, the clothes, cars and so on but the vivid colours evoke a dream-like imagined version of my childhood, one that seemed familiar, but I hadn’t experienced. However, just like the real thing, this false nostalgia still gives a sense of comfort in recognition of the familiar.

Extract from Temporal Dislocation and Audiovisual Practice, Paul Greenleaf (2022)

Having a mixed bag of weather but not worrying. Just returned from Plymouth they’re more shops there than the whole of Croydon & Bromley put together. Amazing the number of people on holiday. The “Tamar” is a fascinating bridge crossed all too quickly.

We are having a most enjoyable week. We went to Helford Passage & visited Emmie at Manaccan. She is very well apart from the arthritis. We have been lucky with the weather, rather breezy some days but no rain.

Now this is what I call work – sun sea sand a bit of cooking & washing up & keeping an eye on a v. well behaved 6yr old girl. This place is absolute heaven. The cottage we’re in is just opposite the Y.H. here and just to the right of the bench –about 20 metres in from the cliff edge and a minute to the beach!

My name is Jill Barratt, I live at 2c Cannon Hill Lane, Merton Park, London S.W.20 9.E.P Hope you like this scene of Newquay in Cornwall.

I am enjoying every minute of our holiday & am a good girl. We have had lots of sunshine but today is cloudy. We went to Lyme Regis on Monday.

I’ve been here today remember this view on card and we didn’t loose car. Margaret came with us weather not all that good but no rain.

We thought you would like to know that we found our way to the little church & were appreciative of what we saw. Thank you for telling us & we wish you well at Perranporth which in spite of the bad weather we liked. Let us hope it will be a good day when you move on thursday.

Correspondence installation at Territorial exhibition installation at The CASS Bank Space Gallery, London Metropolitan University, 2016