51 Paintings

BACKGROUND Current international developments in art films have identified the need to establish complex and emotive ways to represent memory as a reflective and social mirror through the moving image (e.g. Cinema, Memory, Modernity: The Representations of Memory from the Art Film to Transnational Cinema, Russel Kilbourn). While this research recognises the significance of such implications, it moves to acknowledge the role of memory through art and its subsequent impact on how we remember and reconfigure paintings through images of place. CONTRIBUTION The feature length artwork 51 Paintings addresses this role through a seven-year study of medieval religious paintings located in the 1000-year-old St Michaels Church at Schwabisch Hall, Germany. The methodology of such enacted a philosophical perspective that considered the role of memory as a catalyst for the ways in which we articulate and come to terms with the experience of viewing paintings, and how these memories can be mapped into new locations of historical and cultural significance. In doing so, it arrives at a new benchmark for the discipline in understanding how art can bring about a reconfiguration of visual memory, and from this, how such approaches can be instigated within a moving image context. SIGNIFICANCE The significance of this research is that it enabled a long-term study which overcame barriers for visually understanding the implications and limitations of place-orientated memory through art. Its value is attested to by the following indicators: the artwork was selected for screening by the peer reviewed screenings and academic forums at the XII International Image Festival in Manizales, Columbia; included as a case study in the recent PhD thesis House and Home by Malcom Bywaters at the University of Melbourne; and as an article of review by Tom Clift in the prominent Australian film magazine Filmink.