Language of Memory

Language of Memory centres on Whitney McVeigh’s short film 'Birth’: Origins at the end of Life, recording six women’s experience of birth and existence, in the setting of St Christopher’s Hospice, London. The simple yet poignant film is enveloped by work in three other rooms that make up the Meadows Galleries, whilst the Corner Gallery’s sound installation 6857 Days provides a contemplative space in which McVeigh whispers the numbers following her daughter’s birth to the day she left school, aged eighteen. McVeigh’s subtle installations and hand-drawn and written works ruminate upon memory and childhood, referring to the meanders of life, delicately balancing the personal with the collective.

Over a twenty-year period McVeigh has amassed a collection of ‘markers of time’ – found objects weighted by their unique patternations; tracing former lives and the once tangible relationship an individual may have had with the object. The artist acts as custodian of these ‘markers’. She isolates yet elevates the materials, entrusting them to reflect and spur philosophical understandings of history, time and memory - forming a shared language.

McVeigh’s symbolic language is an incomplete outcome. Intuitive and uncertain, she collects and assembles, occasionally marks or draws, suggesting ownership yet emphasising, transforming and mapping the unknown. Her process traverses the temporal and infinite; exploring the acknowledged yet abstract components of life. McVeigh draws upon her poetic writings and the language of her objects to access lived experience, others’ lives and places, capturing and preserving the metaphorical properties of events whilst leaving space for the unanswered.

From the press release for the exhibition:

Whitney McVeigh (b.1968, New York) studied at Edinburgh College of Art and lives in London with her two children. She is Fellow in Creative Practice at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts, London. Recent solo exhibitions include Inventory: Invisible Companion at St Peter’s Church, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2015) and New Ink Paintings at Michael Goedhuis (2015) as well as performance Rocking History at Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts, Okayama, Japan (2015). Her participations to group exhibitions include moving image for Extinction Marathon online at the Serpentine Gallery (2014) and Glass Stress, White Light/White Heat at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013). She has lectured and held discussions internationally including in conversation with Amy Bluett about her recent film at The Royal Academy of Arts, London (2015) and presentation of her work at Louise Bourgeois’ Salon in New York. Whitney McVeigh’s children were born in Edinburgh. She is a co-owner of Edinburgh-based independent publishing house Canongate Books.

Summerhall, formerly the Royal (Dick) Veterinary College, is an arts complex supporting the interrelationship and importance of the arts within the fabric of society. It has gained its reputation by showing the very best in experimental and contemporary visual and performance art. Summerhall Visual Arts curates themed programmes; providing an international dialogue between, and platform for, contemporary artists and experimental co-producers, whilst reflecting the wealth of practitioners based in Scotland.

Whitney McVeigh’s Language of Memory is part of Summerhall’s winter 2015 visual arts programme (Dec ’15 – March ’16), curated by Holly Knox Yeoman, Summerhall Exhibitions Programmer.

With special thanks to Pulse Films and St Christopher’s, London.

• http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/sc...
• http://www.summerhall.co.uk/2015/languag...
• http://whitneymcveigh.com/148-continuity...
• http://gu.com/p/4ejzg/sbl
• https://twitter.com/hashtag/LanguageOfMe...
• http://www.summerhall.tv/2016/whitney-mc...