Melissa Gould, A.K.A. MeGo

Melissa Gould explores historical events and memories through installation, she is inspired by historical documents and work closely studies the memories of twentieth century events and conflicts. A large part of her work is focusing on places/spaces. She looks at places which no longer exist, due to war, or a space which has emotions and memories attached to it, as it used to be a site of significance.

'Floor Plan', 1991, is a Holocaust Memorial artwork. It consists of a light-up floor plan of a destroyed synagogue in Berlin. The piece is made up of 110 fluorescent tubes, just slightly underground, and is intended to be witnessed after dark. The light, for Gould, symbolises "the eternal burning light in all synagogues", life itself and tragic fires during the Second World War. As well as light, sound composed by Alvin Curran echoes out of speakers also underground. Human voices accompany the floor plan to create a ghost-like atmosphere, representative of a once existing building and lives, torn apart by war.

Similar to 'Floor Plan', 'Ghost Ship/The Titanic Project' is a floor plan of a now non-existent place/space in light, part of a series by Melissa Gould called 'Memorial Lightscapes'. 'Ghost Ship' will be a life size light projection (882 feet long) of the Titanic ship onto the Hudson River in New York City where it was supposed to end its first voyage. This will take place from April 2012 onwards; the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sailing, and sinking. The deck plan of the Titanic will be visible only at night, once dark. Gould sees her work as memorials of places which no longer exist in the physical sense, but still have psychological meanings, her work is dedicated to memory and loss. Her interest in historical documents and artefacts is clearly visible as the floor/deck plans she uses are the true historical blue prints for the original spaces.

In 1991, Gould, or MeGo as she is also known, created 'Constellation Park'. This piece was a space similar to a golf course, and had fitted 'stars' across the landscape. The lights/stars showed constellations and the artwork explored scale as the audience walked in, around and all over the installation.

http://www.megophone.com/projects.html

Layered Images

These layered images are being fitted inside a box, with a small distance of a couple of centimetres between each piece of acetate. At the front of the box I made, the viewer is a small peephole from a door. This creates a fish-eye view which plays with the scale of the depth inside the box. The back of the box is open to allow light in, however as I develop this work I would like to create boxes which are entirely closed in and therefore must have lighting installed inside. The city is appropriate subject material, as cities light up in darkness and I think very small individual lights would recognise this. I would also try other materials, different papers for example, to experiment with the use of silhouettes.

Scale Project

Mini Mission

As a side-line for the Scale project, we were given an envelope and instructions to find something in Manchester. And then we were to bring our found item, inside our envelope, into the studio.

I found a cigarette packet on a table outside Starbucks in St. Ann's Square, with Greek(?) health warnings on the packet.

I also found two tiny origami turtles made from a drinks menu, in Font Bar.

About the Scale Project...

"Investigating everyday objects, details and structures in and around Manchester.
 Be inventive with scale.
 Play with contradictions of proportions, perspective and ratio."

I chose to look at the structures found in Manchester's city centre. I have always quite liked that not many of the buildings in Manchester properly match one another. For example in Exchange Square, there is the glass-fronted Selfridges store, the grade II listed Triangle, and the old half-timbered black and white Sinclairs Oyster Bar; and glass buildings, the big wheel and Manchester's Cathedral all sharing the skyline too. I thought an interesting exploration for this project would be the differences in scale between these old and new buildings.

As a starting point I took photos of Manchester buildings.