Imagining the landscape: Reinterpreting the mythologies of landscape through the re-appropriation of family archives (R-9050)

This study can best be described as a practice based enquiry into the notion of landscape as understood within a cultural context. It is specifically concerned with how the complexities of landscape and identity can be translated into jewellery practices. I am interested in how we impose or project our identity onto the landscape, and how the landscape becomes absorbed in our imaginations in the process. In relation, I particularly reference the complexities of the South African landscape as point of departure for this study. I am interested in how our identification with landscape can be visualized and documented in the form of photographic archives. In this regard, a personal family archive becomes the source material for this enquiry. The deconstruction, reinterpretation and refiguring of this archive, through artistic practices, allows me to investigate the fragmented and fluctuating projections of self, as projected onto the landscape. I am particularly interested in how our identifications with a place can become translated into emotional connections with places and how the notion of displacement can emphasize and disrupt the attachments that we forge with the landscape. Through an interactive process of enquiry into theoretical and practical research, I explored the various ways in which the reinterpretation of our identifications with landscape can synthesize in the artworks that I create.

Keywords:Typographic Research, Visual Codes

Disciplines:Visual arts not elsewhere classified