Galton Revisited-commissioned

Galton Revisited
Francis Galton Archive and Collection, UCL, London
Research

A research and development project exploring the Francis Galton
Archives and Collection at ULC, London. Certain methods of Galton’s process have been of interest to me (mapping, photographing, measuring and collecting) as an artist and picking up the remnants of his visual research and collections have been the starting point to my exploration into his images, findings and processes.

Often my works stems from a particular image discovered within an archive. Studies such as ‘Mental Imagery and Visualizing’ and ‘Redaction Breadth’ along with the disparate collections of images, newspaper cuttings, family portraits and viewing/measuring devices have allowed me to play with and allude to the imaginary tales within these now hidden identities; map them, unravel them and open them up for public questioning and creation of imaginary facts or continuations of personal or fictional stories. Galtons’ images work as a trigger for a collective story presented in my work…. Remains of cut away family portraits used for research and left anonymously behind form basis of this project. Exploring the nature of memory, identity and representation; the film maps across a still image some belonging to Francis Galton’s remaining archive, some of my own anonymous portraits.

The camera and oral narrative will navigate the possibility and validity of visualizing mental imagery from these family portraits, a mix of the truth and fiction embedded within the once personal, now anonymous remains of images will be alluded too.