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A Familiar Place by Layla Curtis

 A Familiar Place by Layla Curtis
Accession Code: wu0779
Title: A Familiar Place
Date completed: 2000
Medium: Collage
Location Name: Humanities Building
Location Description: Psychology

Purchased by the Contemporary Art Society Special Collection Scheme on behalf of Mead Gallery, University of Warwick with funds from the Arts Council Lottery, 2001

Curtis is interested in the deconstruction of maps. In her mischievous and meticulous reinventions she relocates cities, counties and even countries producing an unsettling version of what should appear familiar. As an artist working in the UK, she also makes a statement about cultural zoning and the way attitudes to the regions influence status, media coverage and economic support. The shared hegemony of London and Glasgow results in a relative shortage of opportunities for making and viewing contemporary art elsewhere in the UK.

In the more international maps that Curtis has adapted, intriguing questions arise about history, colonization and power and we are led to recognize that our mental picture of the world is not always as comprehensive as we might believe.