Mnemosyne Grove: Photography, Memory and Time

Mnemosyne Grove is Georgia Metaxas’ first monograph, published by Perimeter Editions (Australia, 2024). Using the olive tree as its central motif, the work traces connections between land, family archives, migration, and storytelling, reflecting on photography’s capacity to serve as a nexus for multiple personal histories. Drawing on her Greek-Australian heritage, Metaxas journeys between two sites of familial significance in Greece: an olive grove in Palairos, where ancient trees named after women in the maternal line have stood for over five centuries, and Ithaca, the island from which her father’s family migrated to Australia in 1901. Through photographs, archival materials, and inherited narratives, Mnemosyne Grove considers memory as a porous and evolving process, one shaped as much by absence, imagination, and retelling as by historical fact. The project is further informed by Homer’s Odyssey, a text whose themes resonate with Metaxas' own journey. Georgia Metaxas will be in conversation with Dr. Marta Weiss, Senior Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Their discussion will explore the making of Mnemosyne Grove and the ways the work has continued to evolve, from an exploration of memory and family history towards an ongoing investigation of photography’s relationship to time, repetition, return, and regeneration.