Hold on to Peace - Image courtesy Ira Mitchell-Kirk

Hold on to Peace - Image courtesy Ira Mitchell-Kirk

Friday 9 April 2010

From Taranaki to Lazio

(Above) The suitcase in which the works will travel to Italy.
(Below) On display in Taranaki.




Artist Statement, Frances Rookes.


L'importanza della storia di famiglia aumenta via via che la nostra capacita' di ricordare diminuisce. Purtroppo molto va perso ogni volta che perdiamo un membro della famiglia, e quelli che rimangono mettono assieme frammenti sfocati che spesso non combaciano sulla stessa storia.

Nella mia ricerca per questa mostra sulla "Pace e la memoria....", come nipote di reduci della seconda guerra mondiale ( mio nonno e mio zio), mi sono ritrovata a cercare di capire quale era la vera storia e quale era l'involucro in cui era stata messa per evitare di parlare di qualcosa di troppo doloroso o di troppo traumatico.

Sono giunta ad una conclusione, il narratore ha il diritto di raccontare e di omettere cio' che vuole, sta a me rispettare, apprezzare la sua scelta e lavorare con quello che mi e' stato raccontato come verita'. La "verita' " mi giunge sotto forma di ricordi di guerra, fotografie, cimeli ereditati e il legame di cose tramandate da mia nonna e da mia madre che hanno saputo tenere vivo il ricordo. Il mio lavoro parla di queste cose.

Spero che un giorno si possa raggiungere la pace nel mondo, credo che dei cittadini con degli alti valori morali potranno raggiungerla.

Frances Rookes 2010

Family history increases in importance as our ability to remember it diminishes. Sadly much disappears from our reach as we lose family members, and those of us who remain, share faded and differing stories about the same events.

In researching for this Peace and Remembrance exhibition as the granddaughter and niece of surviving soldiers from WWI and WWII, I am left wondering which stories are actual and which stories are the gift wrapping around events that are too sad or traumatic to talk about.

The resolution I have come to is that it is the right of the teller to decide how or what is told, and what is not, and it is my business to respect and honour that and to work with what I have and know to be true. My truth comes in the form of war records, photographs, inherited memorabilia and the legacy of taught skills handed down to me by my maternal Grandmother and Mother who kept the home fires burning. My works speak of these things.

I hope for world peace someday, and I believe morally empowered citizens can achieve this.

Frances Rookes 2010

1 comment:

  1. I phoned wondering if I've missed you.... Am sooo enthralled by the finished items Frances - have you done descriptions as well as your resolution, of how your choice of materials and depictions came about. I have sent these to friends and family - my grandfather McGregor's brother Jimmy , was sent to the front in France at age 19 and was killed at Delville Wood in the Battle of the Somme, with first-day dead totalling 20, 000. Yes that's 20,000 on day one. "The war to end all wars." He'd been born in Namibia but had family in Scotland, so he volunteered.........

    And so your touching reminder of Taranaki to Lazio tolls a bell call for families around the globe.

    I'm sure your time in Casino will energise you in a quest to empower moral citizens in more spaces than you dreamed of. What happened to the knitted globes with those unspoken spheres within? xElaine

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