Glory Box

‘Glory Box’ explores the notion of memory found in landscape and imaging, through a live research and sensory ethnographic approach. 
 
The work was conceived in the towns of Rainbow and Cowwarr, Australia where Olmi has been visiting since 2014 with her camera and her curiosity. An assemblage of images have been gathered from conversations, numerous cups of tea and a generosity of spirit from a community in their sharing of histories and archive material.  
 
The work is not so much a documentary snapshot of country town Australia, but rather a work that speaks to the viewer of the commonality of experience throughout  small communities, how we reflect on our own archives, and our reading of the photographic image. A photograph can simultaneously tell us everything and nothing, and its opaque tendencies are explored in this contemplative work. Memories are fragmented, fleeting and sometimes hard to decipher. They often seem shrouded in a darkness until brought into the light through the unconscious and the recurring nature of recollection. 
 
‘Glory Box’  creates a journey in which the viewer actively engages their imagination to create their own reading of the work.   
 
Leanora Olmi is an artist-researcher and film curator based in Melbourne. She is currently doing her PhD at the Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne. Her research explores a community’s experience of their environment through personal archives and storytelling, touching on notions of memory, social imaginings and change. The project examines communities in regional areas and the stories of inhabitants through a series of community archive events and through Olmi’s own photographic practice.