Summer Programme 2012: A Portrait In Absentia
A Portrait In Absentia
Kathryn Gray & Stuart Fallon
PREVIEW : 4th SEPTEMBER 2012, 7pm-9pm
CONTINUES : 5th to SUNDAY- 9th SEPTEMBER 2012, 12pm-5pm
GENERATORprojects
A Portrait in Absentia began in 2002 when artist Stuart Fallon discovered an old diary in Tayside Recycling Centre in Dundee.
This chance find led to an extended letter correspondence with a stranger in Sydney, a relative of the diary’s author whose details were found therein. Fallon travelled across the world to meet her in 2008, and began collaborating with Kathryn Gray to document and share the storytelling around the diary.
This project has been marked by a series of extraordinary events and discoveries, and underpinned by dialogue around notions of 'home', addressing issues of migration and loss. Fallon and Gray’s investigation of the diary's author contends with spiritual faith and disparity of belief in fate or coincidence. They explore the protagonists' words, sites and connections through narrative and documentary process.
This exhibition of the latest chapter of the work at GENERATORprojects represents a symbolic return of the project to Dundee, its point of origin, exactly 10 years since the discovery of the diary. The multi-media installation juxtaposes the dual-screen video with other elements, to portray the characters known and absent and the questions that bind them.
Kathryn Gray lives and works in Sydney, Australia: www.likely.net.au
Stuart Fallon lives and works in Edinburgh, Scotland. www.sdfallon.co.uk
They have been working on A Portrait in Absentia together since 2008.