Remembering Gesture Through Painting
My practice-led project in painting examined embodied memory acquired through repetitive housework practices and affective relations with domestic surfaces. Theories situated in the humanities suggest that learning through our body is formed by trusting body sensations and haptic perception. The project, positioned within a contemporary visual art framework, proposes that embodied memory of repeated actions gained through doing domestic housework can contribute to methods of painting. Also, during the painting process, traces of subconscious body-held and body-felt knowledge are made visible as unique coherent gestures. In this project, cleaning methods were used to tame painterly messiness with a focus on affective relations during close touch-making, encounters with surfaces, borrowed colour and abjection. This exploration generated outcomes through interactions between my body, art materials, substrates and environments to reveal and value my body’s gestures as a visible language that transforms perceptions of agency within domestic housekeeping and painting practice.
