SOPHIA DOUNOUKOS

ReCollect

27 September - 6 October 2024, CCAS Manuka

Exhibition Opening: 6pm Thursday 26 September 2024

An avid collector of found objects, nature and ephemera I have always been drawn to the forgotten and discarded.  Everyday I take photos to record and remember these things and other forms of fleeting beauty. 

These photos inform my art practice. Through experimentation and juxtaposition - new and unexpected associations reveal a bigger narrative, a dialogue between the past and the present. The resulting visual assemblages combine photography, collage and digital processes. Some works are laid out like strips of litmus paper - registering memories and ideas in varying intensity - while other hybrid works are displayed in collections like pages from a field catalogue.

These works are personal - they are about me - a grown woman with life experiences trying to make order out of chaos and obsession. Facing the tension that exists between hanging on and letting go, between the responsibilities of a full life and a desire for escape, bingeing on imagery to engage with the world, and then the becoming aware of how my mind is flooded with input, and paralysed by potential.

These works are about identity - as if the act of recognising beauty and attaching value to discarded objects and fleeting moments is an attempt to define my place and value in the world.

As a child of the diaspora, the theme of being lost and found (dislocation) has echoed throughout my life - especially now - as a carer for my mum I am experiencing mum's deteriorating memory. Our shared history is vanishing at the same time I am becoming a voice for, and the next link, in that narrative.

Image: Sophia Dounoukos ReCollect 2024, Digital assemblage, pigment ink on cotton rag, 60 x 60cm