Thomas Woods

My work focuses upon my home town of Grimsby and its rich history and how through the exploration of place my opinions about my home have evolved and changed.

Within these works I look at the essence and prominence of memory within our lives and how fragile and easily manipulated memories can become. Each attempt at recollection alters the accuracy of the original memory until the recollection isn’t of the memory, but the recall itself. Over time warping the memory until its completely unrecognisable from its original state. This process causes the recollection to become a habit or more accurately a reflex.

To demonstrate the fragility of memory and the tampering process of recollection, I interviewed my family about locations from their past focusing on landscapes and architecture, which had either been fundamentally changed or no longer existed. Solely using their interviews, and the descriptions they gave I created a series of dry point prints that reconstructed their memories providing a visual representation of how they perceived these lost locations which now only exist within their memories.