Loss, grief and the process of saying farewell are things that everybody experiences at some time in their life, and is the subject of Remembrance, an installation by artist Frances Hansen. On at Manukau City’s te tuhi - the mark from the 18th of August to the 30th of September, Remembrance is an installation in three parts.
The first part of the installation is titled Remembrance, which are works that speak of the process of grieving that those who are still living go through. Thirty-six small photographs of images that recall the way we grieve, such as the placing of flowers, plaques and mementos at grave sites, are arranged on the wall to suggest the brickwork in a memorial garden.
Personal Effects is the second part of the installation and uses different types of fabric to represent personal articles of clothing and the dressing and arrangement of the deceased before burial.
Family Fabric is an arrangement of squares of canvases that refer to the ritual of death, using areas of colour and painted pieces of fabric. Visual details refer to the processes we go through during the ritual, such as cleansing, absence, offerings, sorrow and remembrance.
A catalyst for Hansen’s creation of the installation Remembrance was a death of a member of her own family. From a very private and emotional experience, she has created a public site for reflection on the nature, emotion and ritual of death. She states ‘There is constant change in death, nothing is ever the same anymore, particularly with the passing of time.’
Ephemera
→ Frances Hansen: Remembrance, 2001, exhibition card