A Tourist in Other People's Reality

"At a certain point it was just too much, I kept going through all these documents, and felt caught up in this trap, the dust, the labels, the documents repeating over and over, and ultimately all related to death. It was a relief to be able to find those few cases that caught my attention. For example, the ‘madness certificates’. A blank certificate like this bears the possibility of it still being used. Then there are the few cases of those people who rebelled against the Masters of the House, like Sarah Plummer, and I felt like I wanted to find out more about her. So I tracked her down in the archive, from the one sentence listing her misbehaviour and the decision of the subsequent punishment, in the committee meeting notes, across to the admissions book for the same year, and that’s how I found out that she was 14. I suppose one of my approaches could be called zooming in on the fragment, of a personal story. "

Participating artists: Cecilia Bonilla, Sława Harasymowicz, Joanna Rajkowska.

Exhibition Catalogue with essays by the exhibition curator, Olga Ovenden (Waterside Contemporary), Elisa Adami (Mnemoscape) and interviews with the artists by Alessandra Ferrini (Mnemoscape) was published by Mnemoscape Publishing. Designed by Monika Ciapala.