Sophie Abbott- Do You Still Love Me Darling?
Sophie Abbott is an artist based in West Yorkshire, UK. Her work primarily focuses on storytelling, constructed narratives and universal emotion. Abbott’s project Do You Still Love Me Darling? is a project that encaptures these themes, and does so by exploring the narrative between a young couple in the time of the Cold War. Using found letters sold at a car boot sale, Abbott establishes a dialogue through letters, appropriated imagery and locations to tell a story that she believes is indicative of relationships and references the sociological idea of romantic love. What Abbott’s story is not, is a love story- but an exploration of the intense and at times erratic feelings often experienced in a relationship setting. “First and foremost, I didn’t want the project to focus too heavily on the romantic aspects of a relationship, but also incorporate the possessive feelings, overwhelming jealousy and unpleasant arguments as this to me is a large part of it. Often these elements are unspoken, and therefore overlooked. When Tracy Emin first produced her body of work My Bed the controversy of the project was that it focused on the ugly. The idea of focusing on the catastrophic “end” was bizarre and something that inspired me when making my final edit for the project”. As well as admittedly taking influence from Emin’s work, another inspiration to Abbott is French artist Sophie Calle.
“Sophie Calle is undoubtedly one of my favourite artists simply down to the way in which she interlinks both objects and subjects in her work. In particular, some of my favourite projects include ‘Exquisite Pain’ and ‘Take Care Of Yourself’ both of which were huge influences on me when pursuing the project”.
Much like Calle, Abbott has used objects as well as appropriated imagery in her work, which was presented in book format. “Originally, all I had were the letters between the couple, which ranged from 1950 to 1955. These obviously contained a few addresses, one of which was the RAF base in Oldenburg, Germany. When I arrived at the air base, I had a local Helmut Friz who acted as our tour guide – working together to locate where Ron was potentially based. The site itself was astounding, and extremely quiet. The base is now property of the German Federal Government but most buildings still stood, despite it being eerily derelict. It dawned upon me whislt on the site that everything was gone, buildings and structures still stood, but the site was bereft of people and soul. This made me think of the letters, full of happy memories and future plans. These letters existed materially, but the context of them had passed and time had inevitably moved on”. Abbott often uses the example of receiving your first gift or valentines card. “Its almost like looking in your loft and finding your first ever valentines card. It may have been years ago, and time has passed and the context has gone, but yet the card, nevertheless, still exists. This is much like taking photographs. Solidifying a moment that will never exist again”.
The project is presented in book format, specifically so spectators can journey through years of letters and narrative. As well as containing images from the German Air Base, there’s also a series of appropriated images too. Whether gathered from the airbase, or in the box of letters, each image makes reference to the couple and their experience of long term love. “Every experience of love is unique and none are quite the same, if I was to redo the book I could make several indications of Ron and Aprils relationship, but this is fiction and I could never be ‘right’. I hope the work is subjective, and spectators can place themselves in certain parts. Anyone that’s ever had a relationship or even a deep friendship can ideally relate to at least one element of the narrative or imagery.”
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