DUST
Gail Burton
The sixth intervention by an individual artist at Hovel
Exhibition open from Saturday 7th November until Sunday 22nd November 2009
Private View on Sunday 8th November, 4pm to 8pm
Opening hours:
Saturday and Sunday 12 to 6pm
Weekdays by appointment
Hovel is located in Camberwell, South London. For the address, or to make an appointment to visit, please phone 020 7703 6337 or email hoveltenant@googlemail.com
Dust, the Victorian term for all manner of waste or rubbish: a valuable substance that told the story of the lives that produced it; a heap to be carefully categorised and searched through; a point in a process. For the sixth intervention at Hovel, Gail Burton has created a collection of paintings and mixed media works exploring the connections between looking (looking for, looking at), the unseen and memorialisation. A narrative of dirt, of contemporary London's invisible dust-economy, interweaves with portraits of long dead people, painted from miniature Victorian photographs on mourning jewellery. The names of the Victorians who mourned, and were mourned, are lost, but their images connect us to the act of remembering. As a traditional ballad, 'The Housewife's Lament' sings 'There's nothing that lasts us but trouble and dirt'. Dust and dirt remember us; we live on in unseen ways.
