Arabella Goff
(She/Her)
Arabella Goff (b.2004) is a text-based installation artist living and working in Glasgow. Utilising lived experience as medium, she reclaims existing material to form her work, looking at the way we behave, live and document our lives in intimate and personal ways.
Her practice engages the personal archive, to explore themes of permanence, anonymity, authorship and interpretation; resurrecting the past and uniting the human experience.
Arabella’s current practice focuses on the unseen digital record of society through an ongoing open-call titled ‘Note to Self’. Having accumulated over 1,200 notes through her own Notes App, she sees value in their nuance and how each one is a work in itself; a depiction of personality and vulnerability. Whilst this project may evolve in different directions, a focus on exploring the self and its connection to the wider social realm is key.
Degree Show Overview- Note to Self
‘Note to Self’ is an on-going anonymised open call, in which the public are invited to submit notes from their phones.
Arabella recognises the value in the notes app as a confessional space; a reflection of nuanced habits, beliefs and memories. Embracing authorship of the notes by combining her own with those submitted by strangers, she is able to reclaim and reconstruct the archive through the manipulation, selection and curation of text.
For Degree Show, every note submitted via the open call is displayed, with a selection of her own. A total of 499 typewritten notes cover every inch of the walls, placed in sequential, uniform rows. The install period required precision and thoughtful decision making so that notes at eye-level are more provocative, enticing audiences to read on.
The curation of Note to Self, is intended to challenge the viewer’s ability to draw out personal affiliations, resonances and reactions by placing certain notes next to contradictory or mundane examples. Additionally, anonymity allows the notes to be decontextualised and reclaimed by whoever experiences them.
To challenge the current climate where privacy is becoming more sought after, yet increasingly harder to achieve, she employs analogue processes to instil tangibility and permanence, bringing hidden moments into public spaces. Using the traditional typewriter, Arabella works with mass-scale to confront, overwhelm and entertain – to reveal human vulnerability and highlight individuality through more immediate and visible means.
The notes app exists as a readily used yet easily disposable aspect of our lives; a divide Arabella’s practice strives to dismantle.
The Notes
