My Fakes and Counterfeits : presenting on on-going work examining the archaeology of the facsimile

Every fake contains the fingerprints of its own age. Fakes and forgeries represent their era of creation and the mindset of the cultural moment they are made in. The idea of verisimilitude is inexorably linked to the construction of images. Versimilitude is a technique that assures the viewer that what they are seeing is some kind of truth. This idea of truth is bound to our idea of art: we are taught from an early age that we can make art by virtue of being human and that our intense individual feelings are expressed through art. There is this romantic conjunction of art and personhood. This presentation will raise questions about the ways we look at art and images by applying the techniques associated with fakery to open up the image-making process. Using drawing as a primary method of enquiry, this research is concerned with the ways we engage with facsimiles. Penny’s drawings examine the codes, fabrication and address by precisely copying source material that includes texts about the moon landings, political memos and images from art history, raising questions about their value and form.   Penny will reflect a particular strand of her current research and the ways in which her practice as an artist maps her own curiosity about images, constellated through visual works and texts.