World/Inner/Space
There are spaces within dreaming in which remembered and imagined landscapes are suspended together, overlapping, merging and separating. They form new layers and environments that we have not experienced before, and they seem otherworldly despite their intimate familiarity.
2022
Weltinnenraum
The World/Inner/Space body of work explores these landscapes in a way that acknowledges the history of ‘landscapes’ as well as the different ways in which all people see and experience landscapes. Despite having the same visual information, people perceive these environments differently every time they are recalled, revisited or dreamed about, so that eventually, the memories become a fantasy place rather than the original location. There are three aspects of World/Inner/Space, The Time Between Sleeping and Waking, a coloured pencil landscape, Memories of Flowers; a series of monotypes of plants, and Daylight Fire; a layered landscape drawing on tracing paper, each piece has a nuanced focus on imagined landscapes that aim to explore the idea of weltinnenraum within my ongoing art practice and the way in which people engage with landscapes.
The Time Between Sleeping and Waking
Daylight Fire
The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke described an imaginative space within all of mankind that was instrumental in understanding and living in our world. The word that Rilke used to describe this place was ‘weltinnenraum’, literally translated as world/inner/space, and it describes;
‘an imaginary space that is at once inside and outside, enfolded psyche and projected into outer space.’ (1)
That is, that on viewing and experiencing the world, we bring it inside of us and interact with it, projecting it outwards and informing our perception of the world. This imaginative space is at once internal and external, therefore the experiencing of the world is not a passive act but an embodied action that helps us to make sense of the world and recreate it within our imaginings within us (2). In this sense the world is no longer a separate object instead it becomes a subject that we are part of3, and viewing the world is crucial in helping us view and understand ourselves.
and 2. Burrows, Mark S. “‘The poet alone unites the world’:The poetics of praise in Rainer Maria Rilke’s “The Duino Elegies.’” Literature and Theology 29, no. 4 (2015): 415–30
Memories of Flowers
Memories of Flowers Detail
The Time Between Sleeping and Waking Detail
When I Sleep, I Dream