Ainalaiyn Space presents Preconscious Landscapes, Exposed Arts Projects, London
In 1915, Sigmund Freud suggested that only a small amount of our psychic content is acknowledged by the conscious mind in a single moment. Conscious knowledge, according to the psychoanalyst, survives primarily in a state of latency. While slips of the tongue, dreams, obsessions and the automatism of our daily lives express both the conscious and unconscious components of self, Freud identified a third psychic space. The preconscious is a grey space; a liminality. The Freudian slip may begin to map the landscape of the unconscious, but it is the sensation of a memory ‘on the tip of one’s tongue’ that exemplifies the presence of the preconscious landscape. If one could traverse this space, one would find memories, ideas, anxieties and obsessions suspended between the conscious and unconscious. With just a prompt, a hint, a jog of the memory, the psychic contents could spill. After long stretches of time, the physic contents could be buried deep under more layers of fresher or more pervasive memories, fantasies and fears. Therefore, our psychic realities can be understood as topographical yet ultimately incomprehensible.
This group exhibition will feature artworks that explore the tangibilities of such intangible matter, asking how the space between the conscious and unconscious can be expressed through materials and making. To some extent, this is an exhibition that dissects the very nature of the surface, landscape, body, and space, questioning the dialogue between these notions and the self.
Participating Artists: Anna Perach, Paloma Proudfoot, Hamish Pearch, Raksha Patel, Gabriele Beveridge, Konstantinos Giotis, Sotiris Gonis, Ramona Guntert, Candida Powell - Williams, Chantal Powell, Lynne Abrahamson, Maro Theodorou, Meng Zhou, Adia Wahid Agnieszka Szczotka, Aziza Shadenova, Matilde Cerruti Quara
Drawing a Preconscious Landscape
As part of our accompanying learning programme for Preconscious Landscape, participating artist Holly Stevenson reflects on the preconscious mind through sharing her most recent sketchbook drawings.