Memento Mori

In your last exhibition, INVICTUS, you took us on a journey, literally from dark to light, through a process of healing as you overcame the trauma of death and love lost. It was a journey filled with cleansing waters and hilly obstacles to overcome. What can we expect from your latest body of work in Exquisite Corpse – I loved you more?
I have always engaged with themes of the human body, religious symbolism, and the polarities of earth and water. The exhibition Exquisite Corpse – I loved you more continues my journey of autobiographical self-expression.

How close to the bone is Exquisite Corpse – I loved you more?
INVICTUS dealt with the trauma associated with death, break-ups and grief. Now I’ve come full circle to the death of my father and I’m finally able to exhibit the memento mori images, which I took of him in his casket before he was buried. The gold thread on the linen symbolises his spirit and his connection to me in the afterlife. I have always dealt with death through the lens and I’m continuing to do this through this exhibition.

Your earlier works featured hilltop crucifixes, reminiscent of Calvary. Have you continued to engage with religious symbolism?
I have gone back to creating my photo works, but now I have decided to print the images onto linen. These works harness the symbolic power of linen in Catholic ritual and iconography, especially altar cloths and the practice of shrouding the dead. I’m commenting on the rituals we go through when something or someone dies. It gets wrapped. Then it’s buried, or washed out to sea, or left to the environment to break down into the earth. My shrouds act as a metaphor for respecting the dead – washing, wrapping, burial – and I do this by printing images of death on linen as my way of portraying the fragility of life, of the flesh and of the mind. I’m also paying respect to the environment, its animal spirits, my father, my lover – all those who have passed away and are no longer here with me.

Hence the title of your latest exhibition?
My photographs act as memorials for the people or places they remember and record. They include personal memories and family narrative and the works explore themes of loss, retrieval, commemoration and bearing witness. Death has always been a part of life, but it’s continuing to become more and more dominant. Death is so prominent on our screens, in print and social media. Just look at the mass deaths of the fish in our rivers and oceans, of the birds and the bees. We are killing our environment. All the people who shaped our civilisation are dying – artists, actors, musicians, thinkers… and let’s not forget the countless images of anonymous bodies washed up on foreign beaches; refugees blown off course so to speak, or the intentional deaths resulting from our clash of cultures and religions in acts of terrorism!

The surrealist exquisite corpse is usually a collaborative drawing or collage of mismatching body parts. Does your new work draw upon this legacy or have you found new meaning in the term?
The exhibition depicts parts of bodies, that relate to the surrealist ‘exquisite corpse’ and as such has been a collaborative exercise in the way it has been made and hung as a collage of mismatching body parts. The Wings of Desire series of dead birds and gold thread has been strongly influenced by Wim Wenders’ iconic Der Himmel über Berlin and the recent death of Bruno Ganz, who played an angel in that film. I totally relate to the concept of the film, that invisible angels populate Berlin and almost voyeuristically listen in on the thoughts of the people who live there, providing comfort when needed.