Rachael Brown discussed her practice research project Time After Time in relation to ideas associated with the Blue Marble and, in particular, the so called "Overview Effect." While the Overview Effect was a term coined by Frank White to describe the profound cognitive shift and sense of being overwhelmed reported by astronauts on seeing the Earth from space, Rachael's artwork seeks to recreate this sensation as a political and emotional response to upheavals of recent years. Time After Time is a personal work, emerging from Rachael's own activism during the years 2016-2021 and is intended as a call for social justice. Experimenting with perspective and scale, Time After Time (re)presents events and movements such as the climate emergency, the Women's March (2017) and the Grenfell Tower fire (2017) in ways that are disconcertingly powerful, politically timely and emotionally raw. Click to the right to see some of Rachael's work and head an introduction. See below for images and audio from her presentation.
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Rachael introduced Time After Time, its conceptual underpinnings and political and artistic context. Further information in the video above.
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Panel 1 from Time After Time. Rachael recounted that the quote from author Olivia Laing (click slide to enlarge quote) "really summed up how I was feeling after years of campaigning and demonstrating and hoping for change." She described being "stonewashed, battered by the next news story and didn't have time to really give the story before the time it deserved." Thus is Time After Time devoted to reflection, remembrance, reparation, action, but also hope is woven into this all the way through."
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Click to watch video
Click to watch video
Rachael noted the "slow, cathartic" process that underpinned the making of Time After Time.
Early drafts of forthcoming panels for the project
Future plans/directions for the project. Click the image to find out more
Rachael concluded her talk with some thoughts on the power of art as a response to pressing issues and ideas of our times, ending with a poignant quote from Olivia Laing
Rachael Brown
Rachael Brown is a Senior Lecturer at Portsmouth School of Architecture. She currently coordinates the third-year Interior Architecture and Design programme and has also acted as Course Leader for the...
Blue Marble
Dec 7, 2022
A series of talks, workshops, performances and artworks devoted to revisiting the impact and legacy of NASA's "Blue Marble" photograph.