CYWhat Remains
Gallery Installation commissioned by Bridport Arts centre and Inside Out Festival.
What Remains is an exploration of the landscape of our emotions surrounding death.
It is a dialogue between artists Mandy Dike and Ben Rigby.
It is what remains of the process when they endeavored to render visible the epic and mundane nature of death.
It is an archaeological exploration of monuments, mementos and other meaningful objects excavated from their personal present and their relationship with the past.
It is a dialogue between the absolute nature of death and the ongoing challenge of existence.
The overall shape of the logs relates to the eroded Bronze Age Barrows such as we see them today and the geometry of the neolithic Wood Henges of the Dorset area. The logs as plinths, also relate to the context of the gallery or museum where things are identified as meaningful. Gold connects to the prestigious nature of what remains of the rites of passage surrounding death in many cultures throughout history and prehistory.
Some of the objects here are personally very significant, others more generically signify the presence of death and physical degradation in our everyday world.
Within the whole installation there is an attempt to investigate the separation of life and death; the solid remains (whatever their specific layers of meaningfulness) and the less easily described, more ethereal, metaphysical, maybe spiritual, remembered essence of past and present lives.
What Remains follows on from Barrow an outdoor installation commissioned for the Inside Out Dorset Festival 2014. Barrow was a structure inspired by round barrows and the shapes, contours, textures and lines of the surrounding landscape. It was a space for contemplation and offered an invitation to relate to death and the processing of it by the living and the land.