WHAT SEAS
What Seas What Shores What Grey Rocks and What Islands
These 5 pieces of work were shown with (and were designed to echo) the 5 prints in the piece A Certain Slant of Light made several years earlier (see A Certain Slant in the menu). They return to the theme of presence and absence once more and reflect the growing sense of loss and confusion characteristic of dementia. This second series of images echoes the earlier work, though now with composites of 12, each exploring parallel stages, but as if experienced by the person undergoing them.
The process of mental erosion, diminishment, gradual memory loss and shifts in brain function are daily occurrences under any circumstances – we grow older. We age moment by moment imperceptively, in journeys towards our personal deaths.
I am interested in this process of erosion and change as it plays out as we age. In particular the small daily moments that make up our habits and the actions of our lives as we live them: the constantly shifting dance of repetition, holding on, surrender and loss.
My enquiry is into such spaces as the indeterminate moment between actions;
the awareness of the moment present and past; the confusion of things remembered vividly or as a dream; the search for the significant moment and the attempt to make meaning.