Motherhood has been woven through my life, shaping my experience of family, care and identity. As my children have grown older, I have become increasingly aware of how that relationship changes and how my own sense of self is shifting through this transition.

The slow act of knitting, undertaken throughout the exhibition, became a way of reintroducing my physical presence into the installation, holding both myself and the emotional weight carried by the work.

My father’s tools are wrapped in my children’s cot sheets, while four madder-dyed wool balls represent each of my four children. Together, these materials bring three generations into the work, connecting inheritance, care and family life.

Behind a translucent veil, I appear in a photograph; distant yet present. This marked the first time I consciously inserted myself into the work. As my children have grown older, I have found myself reflecting on the shifting nature of motherhood and on who I am when the role that has shaped so much of my life begins to change. The work holds both presence and absence, asking what remains when those roles are transformed.

The fabric retains the imprint of childhood. It records care, growth, absence and family history. Everyday objects become emotional archives.

Living in Glasgow, away from my family, gave me the distance to reflect on motherhood. I returned to the children’s clothes I had kept over the years, using them as material through which to revisit that period of family life. Printing from the garments allowed their textures and traces to become embedded in the paper.

Through touch and repetition, the work became a reflection on change and the ways memory is held within ordinary objects.

For my final degree show at Glasgow School of Art, I presented the work on my kitchen table, which I brought from Devon. The table has long been part of both my family life and my practice; a place where domestic life and making come together.