Eleanor Hall – The Rest is Memory

The title for Eleanor Hall’s debut solo show comes from an evocative line of poetry by Louise Gluck:  “We see the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory”.

In making these paintings, Eleanor was drawing on a time and place from her early childhood when she and her siblings would run through the bush to rock platforms, tidal pools and turquoise sea, and feel like they were in an idyllic world of their own. Gluck’s poem parallels what neuroscience tells us – that the ways we see and experience the world in childhood implant emotions and images in memory and influence how we see into the future.

Building this body of work, Eleanor was also influenced by Charlotte Bronte’s phrase: “We wove a web in childhood, a web of sunny air.” Joy, wonder, but loss, too, colour the moments inspiring the works presented here. That cocoon of sunny, carefree childhood doesn’t last. As we recall and remake it, we feel its joy and the pain of its loss.

Eleanor hopes the works will spark the viewer’s own connections with this idea of childhood wonder and memory.

Opening drinks 5:30–7:30pm Thursday 11 June

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