Traces

Originally commissioned by ACMI in 2001, Traces began as a nationwide call for Super 8 home movie footage. In their approach to the large and diverse volume of donated material, artists Naomi Bishops and Richard Raber worked like visual detectives, combing through hours of footage looking for tiny clues: silent exchanges, glances, anything which might at first seem unremarkable, but upon closer inspection would reveal the secret histories of an individual, situation, time or place. Once compiled, this rich archive of amateur observations was then carefully re-edited to provide poignant insights into the original footage, its inhabitants, and lost or forgotten eras.

Silent and without an explicit narrative, Traces immerses its viewers in a wash of colour, form and feeling. Bishops and Raber have choreographed distinct and evocative vignettes using movement, light and pace. The vignettes appear and dissolve like nameless portraits from an unknown past, or the tail end of an echo. The viewers know something significant has occurred, but like memory itself, they are left only with the traces, and the urge to reconstruct.

Accidental, silent and moving, the final work feels and looks like memory - it is laced with tiny fissures that prise open to reveal beauty, fragility, sadness, banality and disquiet. In watching the everyday dramas of Traces, a viewer can experience a stranger’s memory, while at the same time igniting their own.

Both 1998 graduates of the Victorian College of the Arts School of Film & Television, Naomi Bishops and Richard Raber are Melbourne-based filmmakers who run an innovative company re-purposing family home movies for a range of private, commercial and institutional clients.

This work is dedicated to Richard Seligman and his vision of ordinary beauty.