Memory Objects, 2026

The attic of my Mum’s house is a strange and mysterious place, filled with dust covered boxes and a lingering smell  of old wood. As I searched the corners of this dusty time capsule, using the burning sunlight through a window to peer into the physical remnants of my life, I encountered a box filled with objects and mementos. Upon opening the box, I was confronted by various objects from my teenage years, ever so distance and faded from view; increasingly hard to grasp. The phrase ‘mémoire involontaire’, first coined by Marcel Proust in Remembrance of Things Past, refers to a non-cognitive type of memory, which can be spontaneously prompted by a vivid and unexpected sensory encounter with a material object; a bricklayer holding a brick, an artist wielding a paintbrush, a chef handling a knife. As I blew dust away and set my eyes upon each item, I felt myself overwhelmed with nostalgia as I was transported back to a different time in my life, a different person. We inhabit our deep well of memories, existing within a permanent state of fleeting moments as we experience life. Memory envelops us, it informs our actions and drives our emotions through sensory engagement with the objects, places, spaces, and people that surround us; the tangible things that define our lives. Memory can be envisaged as more than a psychological and bodily phenomenon: it exists beyond the bounds of our bodies as a spatial and temporal environment and our struggle to access an original memory speaks to the fallibility of our capacity to remember.