“TRACE” – We were here. 2024

Interactive exhibition and fundraiser.

Fish Factory Art Space, Penryn, Cornwall.

Could mankind’s need for creation and art be an unconscious desire to be remembered?

A way of leaving a “Trace” behind saying “I was here” and perhaps that meant something.

This collection explores man’s relationship with art, our innate connection to creativity, and how bringing the past into the present might remind us about the value art has on society and the evolution of culture.

These works were created with the intention not to inform us of our differences, but to remind us of our commonalities.

A handprint is unique but not individual, just as people are unique but not individual.

The handprint is a symbol of unity that joins all people under one human race.

“Trace” is an ode to our Palaeolithic ancestors.

Like the handprints left behind on cave walls in a time when man was young, we now leave behind our own marks.

Perhaps by looking into the past at the works of ancient man and how they interpreted and understood the world around them, we might learn to better understand ourselves in this current time.

Private View

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Collaboration

Interactive element

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**Collaboration. 2024**.
*Black acrylic, white emulsion, calico, plywood, varnish. 61x122x1.5cm.*

This work was created through the joint effort of the visitors of the “TRACE” exhibition.

Made as an ode to our Palaeolithic ancestors who left behind tracings of their hands on cave walls as a message to the future saying “we were here.”

With this work we recognise the greater lesson of our ancestors. A lesson of collaboration, a reminder that it was not by strength or coincidence that mankind flourished but by our ability to work together.

By summoning of the past into the present this collaborative work reminds us that in order to succeed we must find our commonalities.

Handprints may be unique but together in one space they are just handprints.

A hundred different people from a hundred different lands could place their handprints next to each other and what they would leave behind would be simply, handprints.

No differences, no ideologies nor the colour of their skin, just a symbol of what it means to be human.

A definitive commonality.

For handprints are unique, but not individual and people are different but the same, with one race and one creed, to be human and to live.

Gallery

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