RJ Fernandez – In Progress

Open Studio Public Opening
Saturday 6 June, 12–4pm

We’re pleased to announce the second iteration of In Progress, an ongoing strand of activity at Amici Studio that opens the space to artists as a site of making, experimentation, participation and dialogue.

RJ Fernandez will occupy the studio with Ginugunita Kita (which translates as “I am reminiscing you” in Tagalog, a native language of the Philippines), a week-long participatory installation exploring the compression of time, memory and the collective marking of space.

A continuous sheet of light-sensitive photographic paper which will be exposed to ambient light for the duration of the project. Visitors will be invited to bring a stone from the seafront and place it onto the paper. Each stone creates a silhouette of absence and presence, holding back the light and creating marks that shift and evolve over the course of the week. As the days pass, the exposed paper slowly changes while the areas beneath the stones remain preserved. The resulting work becomes a visual map of collective presence, seven days of interaction, memory and gesture contained within a single artwork.

The project will begin with visits from local school groups before opening out during Amici Studio’s regular public hours, allowing visitors to contribute to the work.

The installation exists in dialogue with the late Filipino artist David Medalla and his seminal participatory work A Stitch in Time, embracing the artwork not as a fixed object but as a living and evolving collaboration.

An accompanying interactive sound installation by Tony Birch will fill the gallery with the resonant sound of Hag Stones moving across a weathered metal plate.