INGALLERY^.1

09 – 24 November 2024

MADELEINE TUCKFIELD-CARRANO
Memory is Fiction

‘… the revisiting, renders the past askew.’

With Memory is Fiction, Madeleine Tuckfield-Carrano explores the intricate relationship between memory and narrative, and the triggering of somewhat transient associative recollection that shape our perceptions of reality. Each piece serves as a reflection of the fluidity of memory, revealing how experiences can be reshaped, embellished, or entirely reimagined over time.

Remembered associations change the factual memories…. ‘Starry, Starry, Night’, for instance, is a memory of both the night sky in the Australian and Sahara deserts and Van Gogh’s painting of the same name. Neither looks like the factual sky, only the memory of the association between the two is hinted at in the works title.

‘Counting Koala Bears’ is another memory association; driving to the gold coast on the annual school holiday trip and the counting of Koala ‘bears’ as a way of distraction on the journey, of course they were rare and even rarer today, if seen at all at freeway speed. The wire used, collected from building sites across three states, refers to a different associative comment on evidential environmental change. Here the koala-less trees of childhood memory are the twisted wires of building-site barricades, now rare, and replaced with plastic “cable ties”.

‘Paper Daisies (dusty memories)’ remembers somewhat ubiquitous and native everlastings – both ‘dust’ and ‘memory’ collectors’. I love fresh flowers but invariably get distressed when they die, so my preference has always been for potted plants but in turn they too ultimately die. ‘Paper Daisies’ is simply the memory of everlasting thoughtfulness, juxtaposed with the new association with the Paper Daisies growing in the street garden down the road, that bring great joy on an almost daily basis. They remind me of friends, Mother’s Days, Christmases, birthdays etc. … in the very old blue Bendigo Pottery vase that I feel I have known forever…

Drawing on personal and collective experiences, she intertwines elements of the abstract and the familiar, inviting viewers to question the reliability of their own association with memory. Through layered imagery, she creates visual stories that echo the paradox of her own memories: the more we try to re-capture a moment, the more it transforms by association into something else entirely… the revisiting, renders the past askew.

This work challenges the notion of memory as a static archive, presenting it instead as a dynamic, living narrative—a blend of fact and fiction. By embroidering between the gaps and distortions in recollected memory, she creates a sense of misremembered nostalgia.

Ultimately, “Memory is Fiction” is an invitation to reflect on how we construct our personal histories and associations with objects and experiences that shape the remembered stories we tell ourselves.