Pink Palimpsest, a mixed-media group exhibition, opens today in the Art and Design Library.
The artists, Jessica Gasson and Fionnula Mottishaw are recent graduates from Edinburgh College of Art. We asked them to tell us a bit about their work and exhibition:
“Of the many strange and mysterious things which inhabit our contemporary world none are more bizarre or inexplicable than those which we create and re-create ourselves, enclosed here are our contributions to that unruly mass.
Image by Fionnula Mottishaw
Springing from a range of contexts, logical or otherwise, these objects represent a reaction to our daily environment and attempt to rationalise that over-whelming influx of visual noise…
A Palimpsest is a ‘re-scratched’ surface from the Greek palimpsēstos: palin ‘again’ and psēstos ‘rubbed smooth’. Palimpsests were popular in Archaic and Medieval practices of scroll or book making, where a previous text was scraped away with oats bran and milk so that the paper could be reused for another document although it would still bear visible traces of its earlier content.
A Pentimento is the Art Historical cousin of a Palimpsest – traces of an alteration in a painting or showing an artist has changed their mind during the process of painting. Pentimento derives from the Italian Pentirisi ‘repent’, this approach takes a negative approach to these changes as mistakes, in contrast to a Palimpsest in which the traces of its past leave the object with a richer surface. The term has colloquial uses in architecture, archaeology and geomorphology to indicate that an object has been made for one purpose and later reused for another.
Recycling and reusing materials to reduce consumption of fresh raw materials is a process that resonates today. We enjoy reworking and remaking traces, and this practice forms the basis to this exhibition.”
Come and browse the Pink Palimpsest exhibition on display in the Art and Design Library throughout September.
Tales of One City 