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This exhibition featured the works of twenty artists who explored narratives of pleasurable and painful memories through revisiting their own childhoods. Rather than being simple nostalgic musings, the 'Childhood' exhibition intimately confronted recollections of trauma, sadness, embarrassment, loss and confusion.
Distant, often fragmented memories were unleashed through favourite stuffed toys, embarrassing be-flared fathers, pop-icons and kitsch paraphernalia. In a space jammed with fuzzy fluffiness, crayola crayons, broken dolls and rubric cubes, artgoers were remind ed of their own infantile past.
Unnerving distortions of candy-coated imagery brought recollections of the grimacing aspects of childhood. In a quiet corner Alex Davies erected a lifeless doll on a plinth. Aptly titled Reflux the interactive, information-storing doll absorbed the memories left by various users. Eerily, after some time, the naked doll would relay the participants' memories in static spurts imitating the decaying process of time.
Through the crackling haze of a super-8 reel of seventies home video, Ross Duncan also told a tale of a forgotten epoch. The fuzzy, fragmented footage of a family visit to a wildlife park mirrored the processes of memory selection which chooses to relay the poignant often-painful flashes of our pre-teen past. Similarly, Jessie Cacchillo's drawings, sketched in iridescent felt-tip pens, rekindled the tantalising yet disconcerting qualities present in what are mundane but intimate records of playground years. Cacchillo's sketches dently coloured casings of expended sparklers, bungers, rockets and evidence of the inherent pyromania of the juvenile mind. 'Double Parachute', 'Dragon Balls', 'Killer Bees', 'Colourful Swallow' and 'Wolf Chilli' were among the labels marking the 'ignite me!' explosives. Perhaps, the most poignant was the one named 'Having Great Courage' which seemed to reinstate the purity of children 's bravery