Happenings In A Museum
During the period as Leverhulme Artist in Residence Roma Tearne devised a project that involved blindfolding the statues in the Ashmolean Museum. The rationale for this was that the blindfolds drew attention to the sightlessness of the scultpure. This reminded the audience that the originals of those statues actually possessed sight, yet some of those historical figures were far-sighted, while others were blind to the consequences of their own actions. In this way, the blindfolds defamiliarize the hugely familiar, imbuing the statues with a potent imaginative life.
Subsequently she had continued to blindfold many famous landmark statures around Europe.
Nel Corpo delle Città
Nel Corpo delle Città (In the Body of the Cities) is a short film set in Jannis Kournelis's adopted city, Rome. It unravels and follows traces of memory hidden and stored in urban images, some of which are commonplace, some marvellous. The process of unfolding is structured around a dialogue. Two speakers bring to the images a fragmented narrative comprising memories and impressions, biography and autobiography. Their words are stimulated by the shifting patterns of sunlight and shadow, the contrasts of ancient and modern, by the flowing of water and the sound of music.
'almost'
Wax, oil and cardamon powder of canvas - A series of paintings relating to the novel Mosquito.
The House of Small Things
The house of small things derives from the belated but powerful understanding of what became of Roma Tearne's childhood. Caught in the cultural clash between East and West, her life life was driven forward by currents from both, to produce a surreal mixture shared by many first generation exiles. The images are interior shots of a doll's house that she brought with her on her journey from Sri-Lanka to London. The doll's house bears the traces of childhood 're-decoration', as she tried to make both the doll and her self 'fit-in' with her new home in Brixton. Thus, blue nylon carpet and floral wallpaper now covers the original varnished wood and hand painted surfaces, so that the doll and toy furniture seem incongruous in their new surroundings.
Returning to the house with the questioning eye of an adult gaze, she inflated the scale of the tiny rooms, creating a tense uncertainty between child and adult worlds and between memory and make believe, confinement and belonging.