Anna Révész is an emerging, Adelaide-based artist whose practice encompasses drawing, painting and sculpture, with a particular interest in photography. Révész uses both digital and analogue photography to explore ideas relating to memory, such as how memories are created, sustained or reconstructed. The exhibition includes a series of beautifully produced black and white photographs and three sculptural works that explore the interchange between past and present moments.

This work has developed from previous explorations of the idea of memory within objects – memory existing within objects and materials, memory being transferred from object to person. This work expands on these ideas and begins to look at the idea of memory within built environments and the way our bodies hold memories of spaces.

For this work, I collaborated with an emerging dancer, Darci O’Rourke (Australian Dance Theatre), to explore how, through movement, the body might reconstruct the spaces it has occupied or passed through.

I have also used sculpture to navigate these spaces and take forms from the photographs that further explore the tensions between the transient, unsteady nature of memory, and the structured, material nature of built environments.

This work explores the way that the body holds memory of built environments, and how it may sustain or reconstruct these memories. Ideas of phenomenology and affect theory have influenced this work, providing a scaffolding for looking at how we experience and move through spaces and the way these experiences might continue to shape our interaction with the world around us. How does a body pass through a space and what does it leave behind after it’s gone? How does a space continue to exist within a body and how might these memories re-emerge physically as time passes?
 
“When experiencing a structure, we unconsciously mimic its configuration with our bones and muscles: the pleasurably animated flow of a piece of music is subconsciously transformed into bodily sensations, the composition of an abstract painting is experienced as tensions in the muscular system, and the structures of a building are unconsciously imitated and comprehended through the skeletal system. Unknowingly, we perform the task of the column or of the vault with the body.” - Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin

I am currently a resident at Praxis Artspace Studios (Helpmann Academy Praxis Artspace Residency 2021), and having a dedicated studio space within such a vibrant arts community has really helped to push my work forward and develop my arts practice.

I am also currently being mentored by artist Hossein Valamanesh (Helpmann Elevate Mentorship 2021), which has helped me to expand my practice to sculptural works and explore new materials.

Both of these experiences are providing me with invaluable support, industry engagement and the encouragement needed to refine my techniques and progress with my visual arts career.

When I graduated high school, I was determined to become an architect. In 2015 I moved to Melbourne and began a Bachelor of Architectural Design at RMIT, but I soon realised that the parts of the course I enjoyed most were the early stages of the design process that were more artistic and conceptual.

So, after just a year of study I moved back to Adelaide and reassessed what I wanted to do. I have always had a deep interest in art, but I think I wanted the certainty of a 9-5 job so was always too daunted to pursue art any further.

I decided to enroll in the Bachelor of Creative Arts (Visual Arts) at Flinders University/Adelaide College of the Arts, and once I began the course I fell in love with the visual arts world, and in particular, photography. I had amazing photography lecturers that pushed me to explore different materials, techniques and concepts. I knew that this was the world for me, and that even though it wouldn’t be easy, I was determined to put in the time and effort to make visual arts my career.

IMAGES >  Photographs by Anna Révész

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