Artist Statement
‘The view from the private world is considerably different from the view from the public perspective. By bringing the private into public view, women bring the deepest level of psychic reality out of the bedroom and onto the stage, where culture itself can be confronted.” – Judy Chicago, Through the Flower (1975)
My work explores familial relationships and the way in which we experience these as tied to our domestic environments. Rather than attempting to construct clear linear narratives, I allow each story to unravel, forming its own disrupted narrative, disjointed, murky and dreamlike, in much the same way as we experience memory itself.
Within my practice, there is a common theme to the subjects I choose, that of personal experiences and situations. The personal subject is both autobiographical but also universal, the images occupy a dimension that crosses over between the private and public spheres. My approach is like that of an archaeologist, sifting, revealing and preserving my subjects through the act of visually recording.
In the set of images entitled Villa Mona (2000) I photographed the family house on the Belgian coast that my great-grandparents moved to with their five children during the war. My grandmother, my mother and myself have all spent parts of our childhood there. The collections of objects that can be found in the home can be seen as still life set-ups curated by family members. Objects are placed to act as symbolic reminders of important places, people and events in our lives. These combinations of objects sit within their environments next to other things, wallpaper, furniture, ornaments, thus creating their own miniature narratives. In opposition to the kind of minimal interiors many people aspire to the objects that clutter the Villa Mona are showcased and revered, demonstrating through their stillness and seeming immovability the residues of past lives.
In the series Noon (2003) and Avenue (2005), I photographed my female relatives and their home environments. These typical bourgeois dwellings show these women as part of the interior spaces they inhabit, often in their domestic roles. The images show an interior landscape that reflects the psychological states of the inhabitants.
Resume
I was born in London, England, 1974 and studied for my BA (hons) in Photography at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design University College from1993 -1996. I gained an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art from 1998-2000. I am currently a lecturer in photography and Video at the University of Sunderland.
Work from my MA formed the basis for Eventful – Photographic Time a book featuring the work of graduates from the programme with an essay by Eve Lomax. My work also featured in an article on new talent in the Independent on Saturday magazine. After graduating I continued to develop my art practice exhibiting my photography and video work at the Pump House Gallery, Battersea and in the exhibition ‘Assembly’, in Stepney City.
More recently I have exhibited work at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland, Flaca Gallery in London, K3 Project Space in Zurich and Imola Museum in Italy. I have also taken part in Braziers International Artists workshop and the exhibition ‘proof’ at studio 1.1, London. My work has been featured in ‘n.paradoxa International Feminist Art Journal’ and I have also taken part in the artist’s seminar series at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead.
In 2005/06 my work will be published as a photographic book ‘Villa Mona – A Proper Kind of House’ funded through Photo-north and the Arts Council England North East and Published by Trace Gallery, Weymouth. I recently received a Research Development Fellowship to undertake a project entitled ‘The last Picture Show’ looking at photography and the changing nature of the family photographic archive.
