Rosie Sykes

Immortality, Memory, and Obsession. ‘Camera Obscura’ depicts the extended life of a woman, whose slow memory loss is depicted through hand embroidered imagery of vintage cameras.

Born in the late 1600s this character, an unnamed women, is forced to watch the world change around her, family and friends dying as everything she understands slips away as her life continues, longer than it should. After centuries, her brain can no longer remember efficiently, causing her to forget everything dear to her. She forms an obsession with cameras, as they remain the only way of remembering the world around her.

Captivated by narrative, Rosie depicts this story using vintage garments and artefacts. This Characters wavering functionality, to the point where she can no longer process the world around her, is explored through experimental embroidery and the use of three dimensional Goldwork details. Rosie’s embroidery captures detailed camera motifs which clutter the costume, colliding and hovering over the garments, representative of this unnamed character’s fracturing mind.