Being Frank (2013)
“Being Frank” is an audio and installation piece documenting interviews with the artist’s grandfather Frank Poole. Frank relates a tale from his army service with the Coldstream Guards post World War II, including guard duty outside Buckingham Palace. The piece deals with themes of nostalgia, identity and the distortion and deterioration of memory, reflecting the artist’s anxieties both with his grandfather’s mortality and these stories being potentially lost forever due to Frank’s recent diagnosis with Alzheimer’s Disease.
The desire to record and celebrate a significant figure in the artist’s life with a compelling audio portrait heavily informs the work, along with the time imperative to document these stories before it is too late due to the progression of Frank’s illness.
Being Frank (Installation View)
2013
3 min 38 secs
Audio Player, headphones, digitally reproduced archive photographs, Customised Garden Shed
WARNING: CONTAINS FLASHING IMAGES
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A selection of digitally reproduced archive photographs featured in the project, featuring contemporary photographs from Post War Berlin, and artefacts from Frank’s military service.