Pennia Barnett -Goldsmiths, University of London
Repetition and Repair: The work of art and the work of mourning

This paper reflects on the drive to restore and make whole, through the Act of repetition, and considers how a work of art might perform 'the work of mourning,' as described by Sigmund Freud in his paper 'Mourning and Melancholia' (1917).
It looks at contemporary visual artists whose work, in different ways, is characterised by repetition, and explores this in relation to Freudian theories of trauma, whereby what cannot consciously be remembered, repeatedly returns in behaviour; and of loss and mourning, where repetition is a means of 'working through' loss, so that the ' lost object' can gradually be relinquished and internalised through memory