the death of Thought and Memory, 2015

the death of Thought and Memory brings together sculpture and film made for a solo exhibition at Devonport Live, Plymouth. The title refers to Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory, the two ravens of Norse myth that fly out over the world each day and return to tell Odin what they have seen. In Grímnismál, one of the poems of the Poetic Edda, Odin says that he fears for Thought, but that he fears more for Memory.

Douglas takes that fear as his subject. We are made from what we remember, and from the stories we tell about it; as memory fades, and then thought, the self that both sustain begins to come apart. In the film dreaming of Memories end, an umbrella stands in for one of Odin's ravens and is shot again and again, broken a little further with each strike.

The loss is cultural as well as personal. As the old myths fall out of common knowledge, a shared frame of reference goes with them. The works ask what remains when those stories are no longer told, and argue for keeping them in circulation.