Specimens
In this ongoing series inkjet photographs sourced from my personal archive have been transferred onto an unstable substance. Once the image has been transferred it begins to transform. The material cracks, bends, contracts, expands and sweats infinitely over time, resulting in a photograph that is abstracted from its original form. The new image is then scanned far past its original resolution resulting in a hyper detailed photograph with each fissure rendered at full clarity.
Each image is named for the information collected from its embedded metadata and my approximated memory of the original photograph's context. Specimens represents material manifestations of memory and affect as indexed scientific material. Though the indecipherable quality of each photograph renders the index unreadable.
Ectoplasms
Ectoplasm would leak from psychic mediums during seances as a manifestation of the spirit entering the physical world. Expulsion often caused great pain to the psychic mediums creating it. At times the substance was solid and would take the shape of a face or body parts, while at other times it was fluid and contained imagery of spirits or memories. A consistent trait of ectoplasm was its connection to the medium. The substance recoiled and the medium flinched in pain when ectoplasm was mishandled by spectators. Ectoplasm externalized the internal.
Ectoplasms is a multi-channel video installation that depicts the decay and dripping of photographs. These dripping photographs are the result of the transfer of photo emulsion onto an unstable substance. The images initially seem static, but they begin to move around the viewer in ways that defy gravity and orientation. The imagery disappears through an unrecognizable mode of decay. As the viewer tries to place the imagery, they grapple with its disappearance.
Hiraeth
Hiraeth (Welsh): Homesickness, or an intense longing for a home you can't return to, or that never was.
This work is an abstract exploration of micro and macro imagery, an otherworldly representation attempting to offer
refuge from this world. The cosmic soundtrack is generated using musical notes generated from my DNA.
Shelter
In this body of work I attempt to understand my grandmother's experience of living as a child in London during World War II through the ephemera and writing she left my family after her death. There are three components to this series: photographs I took of my grandmother’s childhood home in 2015, scans of letters my grandmother sent to her parents as a child and a video piece in which I read excerpts from my grandmother's journal she posthumously addressed to her grandchildren.
In London during World War II, it was commonplace to see signs with the word “shelter” pointing to public places of refuge. While travelling I found that some of these signs are still visible today. Making this work led me to reflect on how shelter is intended to provide protection but often acts as a barrier. Shelter can also be intangible. For some, once the protection is no longer needed, the shelter lingers like an after image stunting connection to the outside world. It continues to impede connection long after the physical element is shed.
Link to video
Home 1963-2013
Through immersive video projections and sound recording Home 1963-2013 is an attempt to reconstruct my grandmother's home.
The projections are a combination of video and photographs collaged together creating a fragmented view. The installation aims to evoke the home's calming presence while acknowledging its ephemerality.
"Home 1963-2013 challenges
the normative dichotomy between private and public spaces by interjecting a domestic space, traditionally understood
as a feminine space within an institution that has been dismissive of the domestic."
- Kristen Millar, COMBINE 2013 Exhibition Catalogue
Link to video
St-Damase
The series focuses on the collision between this small rural town, the vast land that surrounds it and the untouched elements of nature that peek through.
Homes
This series from 2012 considers elements of domesticity such as the configuration of homes and their common decorative elements, placing emphasis on their sense of shared ritual.