barbaresi & round MRSS

Our practice embraces the unexpected, the overlooked and being lost. Migration, loss of space, memory and connections between place, identity and belonging are key themes. In this we work with Doreen Massey’s notion of ‘place as process’ and of ‘the interconnected product of relations stretching across multiple scales, interlinking us in relations of tension and solidarity’ (2008).

Our research processes are multilayered, involving visual and audio documentation,
searching in archives, listening to oral histories and responding to informal collections of text, objects and images. There is a sense of fragmentary time and space in the research which connects with the forms we work with in our practice. Our installations contain a mobile sense of situation, object and image, incorporating constructions, bookworks, digital drawings, film, archival material and contributions from audiences. 

The spatial qualities of painting play a part within the installations, with formal aspects of the work suggesting connections between seemingly disparate elements. We think through material processes such as stitch, collage and assemblage, often fabricating with re-purposed or found materials and encoding past lives into the work.