Sara O'Gorman

Artist statement

My practice involves the production and projection of 35mm slides. I am drawn to these found images, many of which have lost their original provenance. I facilitate the generation of new narratives, formed by the transformation of private familial images into the public sphere; a place where the viewer may become the author of someone else’s history.

The work connects the politics and poetics of memory, referencing Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx, Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1974 film, The Mirror, and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. I exploit the distinctions between mechanically- mediated photographic recollections (preserved from the moment of origin) and the unreliability of neurological memory with all the natural lapses and misrepresentations that occur. I aim to create a compelling sense of familiarity, where the images are simultaneously known and mysterious, and de ja` vu blurs with the uncanny.