Bridget Conway

Artist Statement

I use my art practice to investigate the way images replace, complicate, and work with language to produce conceptions of meaning in culture. In the past, I have used abstract geometric imagery to reference the fallibility of memory and translation, the layering of such imagery with manipulated photos to understand nostalgic impulses and ideas of “home,” and personal writing processes to elucidate complex understandings of time and history.

In the layering of printed images of early country stars–the Carter Family–and my own photographs with abstract monoprints, I call attention to manufactured ideas of freedom and progress in the American West, especially within the context of my own upbringing in Reno, Nevada. I see parallels between the constructed images of their success & the propagated fallacies of Westward expansion, especially as I relate it to my own life and familial history. The sewing of materials to create narrative in the context of the archetypal pioneer woman, and the manipulation of sound and spoken word allow me to experiment with & distort these historically failable narratives and understand my position within them.