ARCHITECTURAL ECHOES Stacey Coughlin

Totems of Everyday Spaces

As a form of communication with residents in care homes, I have developed a form of apparatus to discuss spaces, places and memories through objects.

These sculptures are individual artworks created from found objects that are offered as totems; presenting the 'essence' of a space or place. These totems are based around environments that may be familiar (home, work, forest, carnival, nature, journey, glamour and fantastical) and where we can begin in a sense of familiarity to create something new.

Similar to an 'object dialogue box' (headsor/sorhead), this collection of curiosities can be a starting point for which conversation is triggered around specific categories of potential everyday spaces.

This work relates to memory, but not specifically as reminiscence. I am interested in the 'familiar without sentiment'; a mental place in which the 'memory of the feeling of a memory' can be conjured to provide a positive foundation of 'nostalgia' without any specific emotional memory and potential weighted connections. The fragments of the banal detritus of the everyday; bottle tops, advertisements, door handles; tangible (designed) elements that have surrounded us yet evaded our attention. The world ofadverts, theme tunes, film scores (such as the work of Mancini or Mescherin) are a place in which memory can reside in an 'untapped form'.

Images for Totems of Everyday Spaces, by Stacey Coughlin