Nicola Jane Rae

I am one of eight students who have recently completed a part-time degree course in Fine Art at the University of Nottingham. Our degree show was recently held at Lakeside Arts Centre.

My work is broadly about memory and loss, and makes reference to the marks and vestiges we leave behind. These traces are often re-used and re-interpreted by others - and may also be misunderstood.

I use found fragments not only as a source of inspiration, but also incorporate them within the work, to create pieces redolent of preserved artefacts, family photograph albums, or the Victorian ‘memento mori’. I do not envisage the finished piece of work, but allow the materials and process of making to dictate the final result.

Textile pieces, articles of clothing and old snapshots can be particularly evocative; leafing through a book is a tactile experience and allows time for reflection. The viewer thus has the opportunity to create their own version of a ‘history’, based around these fragments.

Thus my work is a form of recycling, which is also intended to honour the memory of those people, relationships or stages of life now in the past.

nicolarae@ntlworld.com