University of Bedfordshire   2009/2010

Rachel Tweddell

My work considers the capacity of visual images and the written word to record events and claim certainties. I look at dramas (big or small, real or fictional) and the distance between these dramas and the documents or accounts that we rely on to tell us about them. I am interested in finding ways to work with these accounts – newspapers, books, photographs, recordings – which bring them closer to the original event and imagine other possibilities within the context of what does actually happen. Often presenting two opposing ideas at the same time, the work is a study of comprehension and misunderstanding, belief, doubt, contradiction and the peculiarities of memory.

I am currently developing a project which combines photographic images with screen printing. I am looking at photographs of ticker-tape parades (events with a snowstorm-like flurry of confetti) and I want to find ways of printing the shapes of the confetti onto the surface of a photograph, to superimpose the triumphant atmosphere of events of this kind onto less obviously celebratory moments. I have been collecting existing photographs of moments in history that I would like to throw confetti onto. The context of these events varies, but they have in common that they are significant cultural moments that have come to be summarised by a single photographic image. I am curious to test the balance between these ‘content-rich’ photographic images and the flatness of the confetti, reducing a scene to a few fundamental geometric shapes, in the tradition of Russian Suprematism.

This project which would benefit from a lot of experimentation; having the resources of a college would help me to push the idea as far as possible. Apart from the great advantage of having access to facilities, I would welcome the informal input that comes from having students around while the work is being made, so that the project stays loose and playful and open to change.