This exhibition “Lost, Found and Stolen” marks our development as individual artists but, more important, it explores our relationship as a group. (Joan Martin, Lara Mellon & Maggie Strachan) We revisit memories both personal and collective, things that we perceive individually and jointly from the mist, looking at places and ideas that have been abandoned and forgotten by ourselves and by society as a whole.
Through regular contact and scheduled meetings (once a month) we initially set up themes – each artist came to the meeting with a word or criteria. Finding our way unexpectedly through these verbal and visual clues often resulted in these prompts being combined in a new context.
During the past year we have each in our own been diverted by the demands of life, but always found our way back via our scheduled meetings and mutual support. There are definite connections between our artworks - we often consciously and unconsciously “steal” from each other’s work. Gourbault statement is applicable: “The influences may be subliminal and subtle but all that surrounds us in some way changes how we see things and who we are.”
Dr Norman Doidge an advocate of neuroplasticity sums up the journey these artists have undertaken: “We are often haunted by important relationships from the past that influence us unconsciously in the present. As we work them through, they go from haunting us to becoming simply part of our history.”
