TRACES: Totems of Time
Sandra Sirp & Helen Sirp
Viinistu Art Museum Gallery
Estonia
2019
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Traces project is an experimental collaboration between two sisters, touching upon the same topic, whilst interpreting it in their own characteristic medium. The end result is a conceptual dialogue between paintings and photographs, allowing the works to develop new meanings within a site specific installation – a curated journey through the translucent layers of time.
The installation brings together perishability and persistence, contrasting lightness and weight, appreciating the past echoes as beautiful assets that form our presence. The roads we walk on are lined with stones, restoring energy and experiences – a visual dialogue of minimalist painted lines and shapes accompanied by still life photographs of totems (in collaboration with Nick Dunne). The movement of time is emphasized by the changing shadows within the two circular water barrel spaces, the light reflecting and moving like a sundial. The duality and echoes resonate sonically in the metal walls, interpreted into a minimalist soundscape by Mart Männik.
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The paintings are artist’s subconscious streams of thoughts and cognitions, with the process playing an important role in the work- slow, monotonous, repetitive, meditative and disciplinary. Along these lines are the stones totems – surrealist shapes of reflections and no gravity, like magic milestones along the way.
The exhibition is a sequel to the sisters first collaborative exhibition Traces in Tallinn Portrait Gallery, 2018.
Photography: Nick Dunne
Soundscape: Mart Männik
Exhibition photography: Rasmus Jurkatam
Video: Zbanski Kino