Jenny Owens

The series "Fossils, Mile End Park, Supplantations and Parallel Traces (Post - House)" stems from Rachel Whiteread's work House, a sculpture of the interior space of a Victorian house in East London. It was built in 1993 and demolished in 1994. My interest in the work, and in traces, prompted me to visit Mile End Park where House was built. I thought I might find traces of the work there, but when I studied the park on Google Maps I lost hope. I could only see two wooden benches in the place where House had once been. I wanted to go anyway because I thought perhaps there would be some small clues that didn´t show up on Google Maps that indicated that House had once existed. I also thought that maybe other people would have made the pilgrimage to the park and would have left some traces of their visits there like a note, or a symbol or something that paid homage to the work. I did not find tributes, but I did find real, important traces of the work itself. I found brick fossils which appeared to be part of the foundations of House.

 

The series "Fossils, Mile End Park, Supplantations and Parallel Traces (Post - House)" tries to recover narratives from the past on the one hand, and on the other hand tries to create new stories. The brick fossils do not draw much attention to themselves in the park, but they are present and have interesting shapes. I wanted to give them a new life through my photographs. I wanted to show them in their context and also show what now occupies House's place: trees and benches. We cannot see how the work would have changed over time if it were still there, but by capturing the traces of the elements that are in its place, I try to bring the viewer both closer to the original work, as well as to the time that has passed between the disappearance of the work and the present moment.