Recently Steadman's subject matter is focused on the centrality of memory, and the articulation of memory as a mutating system functioning within a set of larger cultural and environmental systems. Memory selects and separates scenes and stories from the past creating a fragmented ambiguous version of reality. Memory is inclined to focus on an emotional utopia rather than real material conditions or tensions, offering a comfort zone to escape from the hectic demands of real life. By investigating the internal domestic surroundings Steadman examines the propensity to recall a nostalgic dreamy past or a fictional fantasised future. The exploration of subjects claims for solitude and social belonging are themes Steadman expresses across a range of practices, including photographic and video installations, and present in works that are structurally concerned with time, space, and duration.
For it is within the context of these elements that the psyche of the solitary individual must make sense of both their own and other's existence. Steadman's interest in the notion of chance and metamorphoses brought about by the weight of memory, allows the artist to communicate a tension between the ephemeral fluidity of the moving images and the physicality of the monitors, heightening a sense of weight by the fixed configuration of the installation.
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