My work at MA is concerned with exploring the ways destroyed places are remembered and whether memories of absent places reside as much in the body through tacit, unarticulated knowledge as through knowledge which is explicit.

The subject of my investigation is Chorlton-on-Medlock, a former working-class district directly south of Manchester’s city centre, which was demolished during the official practice of ‘slum clearance’. Such clearances were carried out both nationally and locally from 1957 to 1975, a practice that demolished 90,000 homes in Manchester alone.

My interest has been the memories former residents might have of Chorlton-on-Medlock before being cleared. These maps directly represent memory maps drawn by participants in this project and articulate the everyday knowledge of life lived in their pre-clearance neighbourhoods. The style is appropriated from travel maps that offer official views of the explored tourist city; my visual strategy has been to elevate former residents’ memories to the level of official recorded memory and encourage engagement with their stories. The relationship between memory and power, between those who remember and those who determine what should be remembered and in what way, is woven throughout my visual and written work.

Elizabeth Kealy-Morris