Sam Race comments:
"My work explores the construction of memory spaces, reminiscent of cabinets of curiosity and still lives from the 17th century in a combination of artefacts associated with the pursuit of knowledge with intimate interiors evoking ruminations on moral codes and mortality. My interiors are assembled from fragments of found and collected imagery both abstract and figurative. These rooms present a stage or display case for groupings of desirable objects of the past and present. Technological devices confer with statues from antiquity and astronomical instruments, presenting a reflection of our obsession to quantify and understand our world, a pursuit that is often threatened by our own vanity. Using compositional devices and glazing techniques derived from the 17th century, my paintings and drawings are built up over many layers in a process of continual reflection and re-working. The result is a palimpsest of marks, which echoes the memories that buildings and rooms contain and which links my work to the history of objects, concepts of collecting as a cultural practice and the malleability of historical memory."
Samuel Race is an artist and lecturer at Cambridge School of Visual & Performing Arts (CSVPA), specialising in Fine Art and Contextual Studies. He is also Head of Arts Lab at CSVPA where he has been facilitating experimental drawing conversations between students from King’s College, St John’s College and CSVPA in a continuing series of collaborative workshops.
