Glory Box, Leanora Olmi 2021, is a two part work. Part one, currently on show at Wide Open Road Art, is a photographic installation. Part two, currently screening at Only-Connect (www.only-connect.org) is a digital work. Across two sites the project collages a series of archival reinterpretations into a new alternative archive of life in Australian regional areas. It reimagines regional archives for future audiences. It explores the fragmentary nature of archive materials and memories. The work disrupts the real intrinsic to vernacular imagery and the notion of archives as documents.
Through the exploration of photochemical film, archival materials and visual culture, the work, created using materials from the past, develops new participatory artworks situated in the present for future audiences.
Leanora is a community artist working with archives and photochemical film. Her work explores visual documents in rural areas of Australia and the histories that they embody. She talks to people about the smaller stories that are sometimes lost in the grand narrative of Australia. These stories are hidden on mantelpieces and in stories around the kitchen table. She works only in rural areas, believing that a collaborative, honourable and experimental approach to creating dialogues and artworks is beneficial and rewarding to both artist and communities. Leanora is excited by archives: they are fertile collections, not dead or decaying, but vital with latent stories waiting to be reimagined and brought into the present.
Wide Open Road Art 