Izzy Smithson

For a long time, I have been influenced by overarching ideas of psychogeography, focussing on the influence of environments on the mind. My practice is currently rooted in the history of my grandparent's house, observing and researching deeper into the significance it has in my life, as well as its wider shared context. I look at the collective ideas of ownership of space and journeys of loss, with particular attention to memory.

A lot of my work concentrates on mass documentation, archiving and journeying through my own personal history. My process involves various stages and methods of visual production, where I enlarge autobiographical photography, produce narrative drawings and merge these with different forms of printmaking to distort and alter the image. Cardboard is used to flesh out the substance of the work and express the unstable and layered relationship to memory, place and time. I use my everyday surroundings as a display mechanism by situating these collages back into my immediate environment, where it also becomes an investigation into the nature of documentation. I have enlarged these images and places them back into my surroundings to reflect on our current situation of stillness and observing.

I am no longer able to visit this house and I now feel an outsider to a place that used to be so open to me. Because of this I have been working with screen shots taken from Google maps, alongside my grandfather's photographs and drawings, adding layers of distant observation that in some way connect with my feelings about this disruption with the past. It is important for me to develop multiple perspectives to be able to fully uncover the history, memories and emotions that were concealed here.