Tori Pounds is interested in the things that remain. With semi-surreal, figurative works, she explores the ways in which objects hold memory and the ultimate unreliability of looking back. The framing of her paintings is always cropped, encouraging the viewer to fill the gaps with their own nostalgia.

"I want to show people the inverted version of their own reality," she explains, referencing her own childhood in which the facade of a perfect nuclear family hid within its folds the long-term illness of her mother. In Tori’s paintings, objects become symbols of how she remembers her childhood - from leather car seats that retained the scar of teeth marks to the alien form of a Furby.

“There is something alien and also familiar about a childhood toy. I have a feeling of nostalgia but also a false sense of security and an attachment to innocence. I’ve been painting toys and animal characters that I once grew up with and around, beastly but cute aliens that look like deformed dogs with extended ears or plastic food in a pink hospital-like kitchen. I’m playing on the idea of what seems real.”

In our first episode of Artist Shorts, we draw upon the objects that hold memories for Tori. Audio from her family home videos provides the soundtrack for the film and it becomes apparent that no matter how personal a search for one’s past may be - there is something universal about memory.