Toby Phips Lloyd : Desert Island

Most of us have a sense of self identity, or at least a reasonable chance of acquiring one. This sense if self is critical to our status of being, yet the construction of identity is largely based on transient, unstable tenants, such as memory and the recall of places, events and actions of our past. In his latet piece, Toby Phips Lloyd summons an atmophere of poignant introspection by way of video and physical installation.

Here, the viewer is invited into a reconstruction of Lloyd's teenage bedroom, appearing as a box made from MDF boards and stud work. This is accompanied but a video of the artist being interviewed, by himself, for the radio programme desert island discs. Asked to select 8 records, a book and a luxury which carry a strong personal resonance, Lloyd's recall of the components of his being is physically manifested in, and tested by, the paraphernalia of his teenage self, left in the room.

As we are drawn further and further into the artist's personal space, both physical and psychological, we are forced to confront our own accounts of the past, with unsettling results. How accurate are our own personal narratives? And, how will we ever know whether what we believe to be the essential ingredients of our psyche are a genuine recollection or a peronal construction?