I have a photograph of a collection of forms but I do not know where this image came from. I have no direct access to this image but a photo to remember. The forms are amorphous and linger, taking my attention in different directions. About the size that would fit into the concave of my palm, a few forms are rough, powdery, crumbly others glassy, smooth, slippery. They are blue, black, grey-green and reddish in colour. If they were not rocks, then they were at least rocks.

It is comforting for me not knowing the exact names of these rocks, their history, or the many people whose hands these rocks have passed through. I am not seduced by their apparent certainty or try to identify them with a crisp objectivity. I am rather observing and recalling them, negotiating words to describe them between the world and myself. Even saying something about them is like laying them down. I find myself in the quiet, where I can pick the image up in my mind and take it elsewhere.

The image had been lost. It was the sole record of something else that had been lost many years before. Now she carried it with her alone, since she was certain that no one else had come to put as much stock in it as her. She had pored over every detail of its surface, assessing the lighting, the marks, the composition. She had gently pressed the image against her hand, and held it just below her nose. She could imagine the image. She thought about it passing into oblivion, into the nebulas of matter swirling in the universe. She resolved herself to keep it safe forever. She would be its guardian, and its conservator. She would handle her love with all the tenderness that she could muster. She would hold it tightly and perfectly until they could both pass on. They would be together again. They would reunite in that other world where everything impossible becomes possible. So long as she continued to remember.

Text by Scott Rogers and Sarah Rose


Suzanne Déry primarily works with manipulated images, print , video and installation. She is an artist from Montreal based in Glasgow and currently finishing her MFA at The Glasgow School of Art. I Went to the Moon and Brought You Back Earth is Déry’s first solo exhibition in Montreal since relocating to Scotland.

The artist would like to thank Scott Rogers, Sarah Rose, Geneva Sills, Justin Stephens, her family and La Centrale.

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