Taming Mess: Remembering Gesture Through Painting

Abstract

This practice-led project in painting examines embodied memory acquired through repetitive housework practices and affective relations with domestic surfaces. Theories situated in the humanities suggest that learning through our body is formed by trusting body sensations and haptic perception. This project, positioned within a contemporary visual art framework, proposes that embodied memory of repeated actions gained through doing domestic housework can contribute to methods of painting. Also, during the painting process, traces of subconscious body-held and body-felt knowledge are made visible as unique coherent gestures. In this project, cleaning methods are used to tame painterly messiness with a focus on affective relations during close touch-making, encounters with surfaces, borrowed colour and abjection. This exploration will generate outcomes through interactions between the body, art materials, substrates and environments to reveal and value the body’s gestures as a visible language that transforms perceptions of agency within domestic housekeeping and painting practice.