Amy Thorne

With a natural love of writing and an ingrained way of looking at the world and expressing it through a mixed media of art, it is only natural that when I discovered the broad and at times deceptive category of Artists Books that I felt most at home and able to finally bring together my split personally. Born in Sussex, England, my family first moved to South Africa when I was still a small baby. Together we moved back to England in 1996 where I completed highschool and college where I studied English Language, Fine Art and Photography. I returned to South Africa in 2003 to do my honours degree in Fine Art, where I specialised in Photography, but using any medium that was appropriate to each idea that I had meant that I often made my own objects as artworks to photograph for the final result that I desired.I am currently living in Johannesburg with my husband and pursue a career as an artist and to broaden a public awareness of art through my love of teaching.

I found quite a large collection of second-hand trophies for sale once in a charity store that seemed to have belonged to a couple, Mr. and Mrs. Mintz. It was apparent they had played a sport together, I presumed golf, but was not sure. I suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of loss for this couple, whoever they were. They were gone, now all this activity was dead and all that remained as a record of their lives was nonchalantly sitting in a charity store window. Who would want them? It felt like reading a book from halfway through and it fascinated me. The idea of commemoration and constructed history has been an a centre point within my work and I need to make sense of what different found objects mean and try to sort out the misplaced moments of time. My use of object and writing works on several different layers of reading, from commemoration and empathy  to the way each one has a constructed and definite narrative. The Snow Globes also all exist on their own as a separate entity, a little isolated world that I have created and once done and sealed, I no longer had control over anything that happened; rust, decay, staining or degeneration. The only way I could fix anything was to destroy it all by smashing the globe to retrieve what I wanted to start again with. This aspect startled me more than I thought it would due to its implications. The isolation of the objects was made more extreme and, in direct relation to my Mr. and Mrs. Mintz, was wholly detaching. I felt more remote from them than I could ever understand.

 Information courtesy of the artist.