Mnemosyne
Swansea Museum
Alice Maher was intrigued by a Victorian painting hanging in Swansea Museum called ‘The Death of Sarah Dillwyn’. It is a group portrait of all the living members of the child’s family ranged around her bed at the very moment of her death. The artist’s effort to ‘freeze the moment’ was particularly poignant and set Maher off on a similar quest, but toward an entirely different type of art work – a large scale sculpture that investigates the form of ‘bed’ and the meaning of ‘memory’ through the action of freezing.
‘‘MNEMOSYNE’ is a frozen object which hums quietly in the middle of the main gallery at Swansea Museum while layers of frost creep over the surface to chill the air with associated ideas’.
Alice Maher 2002
