Memories of my Father
Memories of my Father
This body of work began through experimenting with my late father’s tools. Rather than using them for their intended purpose, I explored them as objects carrying memory, allowing light, print and repeated mark-making to become ways of reconnecting with him.
Working across different materials, I traced the forms of the tools repeatedly. Each impression became less about representation and more about attention. Through repetition, I began to notice the quieter complexities of memory, not searching for answers, but observing what remained.
As the work developed, I became increasingly interested in presentation itself. Installing the pieces within a window transformed them into something suspended between presence and absence, where light, transparency and display became as important as the marks themselves. This marked the beginning of my ongoing interest in how objects, memories and exhibitions can hold experience.
The window installation
Placing the work in the window changed everything. It shifted my attention away from individual marks and towards how the work could exist as a whole. For the first time, I began to think seriously about display, not simply as a way of presenting objects, but as an integral part of the work itself. Questions of museology, framing and presentation became central to my practice.
This was also the beginning of my interest in holding: holding objects, memory, experience and relationships between works. Since then, holding has become a recurring thread that continues to shape how I think through making.
The window became a threshold between interior and exterior, allowing relationships between objects, light and space to emerge. Light passing across the surface kept the drawings in flux, never allowing them to settle. The traces became less like fixed images and more like something suspended between presence and memory.
Through this installation I realised that presentation could carry meaning in its own right. The way a work is held, framed and encountered can be as significant as the objects themselves.