(What if) We mapped our streets differently(?)
In experiencing Tammy Honey's art, the artist's love of patterns, data, mapping and memories becomes apparent through her captivating body of work.
Feb 7, 2023
It’s believed that walking a different way home is good for your brain.
If so then, what happens to your stimulated synapses and giddy grey matter if you follow one of Tammy Honey’s terrains back to your house? Can you even find it?
Tammy, who has exhibited at the Tate Modern, the Venice Biennale, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney and the Gippsland Art Gallery in Sale, explains that she makes work about “memory and place that oscillate[s] between meta and social issues [which are] represented through painting, video art and installation.”
“As a continuation of my existing practice, where I examine recent studies of topographical placements of data through the subject, I seek to better understand this methodological process by developing new works that continue my interest in data mapping.”
“I use non-representational forms through hard-edge abstraction that's then compiled onto canvas in ways that reflect an allegorical subjectification of the image.”
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Mapping Place, shown at the Gippsland Art Gallery, was Tammy’s latest solo exhibition in an impressive 25-year art career – a career that’s produced a body of work that “investigates the cross-overs between memory and place through data mapping and colour field painting”.
“My work is not purely about reproducing topography, but rather engaging with the data and memories within these terrains that affect us through form and colour. This collection [in Mapping Place] focuses on the Sale township in and around Foster Street, then onto the rivers around Clydebank, Riverside Reserve and beyond.
“I use non-representational forms through hard-edge abstraction that's then compiled onto canvas in ways that reflect an allegorical subjectification of the image… I love patterns, rhythms within habits, data, mapping and memories, and then turning this information into a body of work.
“In mapping our streets this way, we need to explore the history, the people, the dwellings and the land to get [sufficient] data to create our maps.”
Luckily, art exists to ask the big questions, not answer them. So let Tammy’s work stoke some pondering and ask yourself: how would you plot your way home?
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Dive further into Tammy's artistic practice at tammyhoney.com.