"Brief Window [Refrain', the Installation by the artist Louise Sudell addresses the concept of the construction of memory. The term 'memory' should be invoked in the plural here, as the generic concept encompasses a range of often contradictory interpretations. The questions of what memory is, how it operates and where it is to be found are posed by the artist in the work.
Three different readings of the term are suggested in the Installation, which takes the form of three separate enclosures. The first section, consisting in a series of overlapping glass plates, contains photographs of shed skin sealed in their glass 'envelopes'. The skin, apparent in human and animal form, traces a collective memory; the memory of bodily tissue, the membrane which envelopes the body and creates a threshold between in- and outside.
The second 'zone', a constructed room, seeks to stage an experiment with light, sourced from a projected image of the human brain located outside the enclosure. Full-sized one-way mirrors contrive to trap and relocate the image in two separate places simultaneously without visible reflection. The viewer remains powerless to intercede in the resulting images
Plate glass screens seal the last enclosure from physical touch. The realm of personal memory is signified by objects contained by the double recess in the fabric of the building. A dummie's head bearing a wig made from the artist's own hair is topped by a transparent glass funnel. The utensil is offered upside-down, its open end covering the skull. A round mirror fixed to the wall reflects the head's blind gaze. The 'tableau' is completed by a facial skin-lift pinned to a cloth and hung from a towel rail. The female body appears not whole, but segmented into a series of de- powered and ultimately empty fragments.
Though the conflicting readings of memory the artist argues for a multiplicity of overlapping traces and locations of remembrance, rather than accepting the view offered by science, which in order to study its subjects, prefers to dissect and compartmentalise them.