On What Endures: Volume 1
On What Endures:
A Zine Exploring Memory, Myth, Transformation and, Resilience
What Endures is my current exploration into narratives of women’s resilience, endurance, and adversity. Using myth as a catalyst, I look at contemporary narratives, observing how they are preserved, transformed, and carried forward across time.
On What Endures is a zine series that accompanies and documents my work as I discover the nuances and forms of my enquiry.
I choose to keep my work ambiguous. The idea that my pieces can be interpreted in different ways by different people is an interesting dynamic—a dynamic that has already proven interesting in a shared studio, where people ask questions about what a piece is, suggest what it looks like, or question what it represents.
The zine is designed outwardly as a simple book, but internally it allows interaction with the pieces through QR codes, which enable readers to scan and access information about each featured work, much like the use of QR codes in exhibitions or museums. This allows for discovery and a personal experience with the works, reminiscent, almost, of exploring the archives of an ancient mystery.
The book is also available as an EPUB file. It is free to download and contains the first set of pieces from What Endures.
An object in and of itself, it is different from the catalogue of my artworks (thus far), being more visual and less refined. A physical archive of fragments and relics that could easily become a relic itself.
The title refers to the questions at the centre of my practice: What endures when moments have passed? What is resilience? What is strength?
The psychology of survival is interesting. The transformation beyond it can be equally devastating. How is memory affected? How are women treated, and how have experiences transformed us? Memory is rarely preserved as a complete and untouched narrative. Instead, what endures are fragments, surfaces, colours, gestures, and materials that hold traces of what came before.
The zine brings together painting and ceramics. The works explore how materials can carry emotion.
In the paintings, the transient flow of memory and emotion is replicated as a moment in time through flowing colours. The accumulation and colour language reference contemporary and ancient residues, allowing marks and gestures to bloom within the pieces, creating forms that disappear or reveal fragments within a psychological world or state. Ambiguous stains are vibrant or washed out, invaded by external thoughts or emotions.
The ceramics continue this psychology as pieces frozen in time. Much like the gaze of Medusa freezing unfortunate friend or foe, this becomes a metaphor for psychological experiences—moments where memory, trauma, or emotion can be suspended, held within a particular moment in time, creating vessels that hold narrative. Unlike the old Greek vases illustrated with their stories and heroes, these speak in terms of form, domesticity, and experiences that are wordless and ambiguous, becoming relics of emotional states.
Clay itself is the oldest form of recorded writing. The first writings were found in Sumerian cuneiform pressed into clay tablets in ancient Mesopotamia, or modern-day Iraq, predated only by cave drawings. The rich history and myth that surround clay are fascinating. The ancient Greeks believed in their mythology that Prometheus moulded man in the shape of the gods out of clay and water. The distinction that this substance is both a bodily compound and a repository for human thought, memory, and language is profound. At its core, it preserves and witnesses human experience.
Resilience becomes almost a sacred element, akin to the sacred gold of the Renaissance period, when, due to its cost, it was reserved for the most important parts of a painting. This consideration and use of colour is an undercurrent in my work, as is the idea of chaos and order.
The concept of control, both outwardly and inwardly, is expressed through geometric form and ambiguous, uncontrolled chaos, reminiscent of Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, where he introduces the concepts of the Apollonian and the Dionysian—psychological and artistic oppositions based on two Greek gods: Apollo (god of order) and Dionysus (god of chaos).
The zine itself acts as a container for my work and these ideas. It is meant as an introduction that can be delved into (via QR codes), should anyone wish to look beyond the forms. Like my work, it preserves a moment: a codex of individual pieces coming together to create a larger narrative.
Finally, On What Endures considers resilience as continuing after trauma and transformation. The things we carry, the memories we preserve, and the traces we leave behind become evidence of survival. Through material, myth, and making, the zine reflects on the quiet persistence of what remains.