holding together

2019

In 2018 the Arts Council of Northern Ireland funded me to make new work in collaboration with Gemma Reid. Together we had been researching the family archive that underpinned previous project their truths, and Gemma’s background in textile art and heritage engagement enriched my vision for making some of that research tangible.

We reflect on the fragmented and incomplete nature of memory. As each moment passes, its thoughts, feelings, words, sights and smells enter into a process of forgetting. Throughout our lifetimes we assemble necessarily shifting senses of self from this growing and decaying mass. The archive is like an externalisation of that process. Though it is composed of materials that have lasted through time and can be handled, looked at, sniffed and read, it tells no more complete a story of its subjects than our memories do of us. We make use of fabrics and paper from the archive, adding stitched text and cyanotype prints of archive negatives, cast and caught in resin. We aim to gesture at those fractured stories from our family’s past and think about how and why we pass them on.