Axis
By Tessa Bunney on 21 December 2009Axis presents a regular series of Curated Selections of artworks on Axis, selected by invited curators. Matthew Shaul, Head of Programming at the University of Hertfordshire Galleries, has selected one of my works for his piece, Mapping Absence, Confirming Presence – Mapping Absence, Confirming Presence – Artists’ Negotiations of Personal, Public and Domestic Space.
He writes: In closing I want to move briefly to a discussion of Tessa Bunney’s Romanian Travelogue ‘Hand to Mouth’ (2003-6). Funded by Arts Council England and the European Cultural Foundation, Bunney’s ambitious documentary project was an attempt to record Transhumance, the practice of moving livestock between upland and lowland pastures depending on the season in the Carpathian Mountains. Bunney has produced a remarkable document of one of Europe’s last remaining peasant communities and the traditions, landscapes, songs and clothing which are integral to it.
Having survived the Second World War, and the extremes of Ceausescu’s Stalinist regime, Transhumance is finally beginning to unravel in the face of the EU’s unforgiving bureaucracy. With an acute documentary aesthetic, Bunney’s concentration on the minutiae – the gnarled figures and outmoded agricultural practices – evokes the tragedy of this fast-disappearing way of life against the backdrop of an increasingly homogeneous society and culture.
Please see this link to the page:
www.axisweb.org/atSelection.aspx?AID=2391