OPENING Saturday 11 April, 11am – 5pm ALL WELCOME

Ashes brings together a series of colour photographs following a year marked by profound loss, grief, and change. In my attempts to navigate events that resisted rational thinking, meaning often felt unstable and understanding beyond my grasp. 

To create these works, I returned to colour photography, sensing a need to record this period in a more direct and immediate way than my black-and-white darkroom practice could. Throughout the series, repeated motifs emerged: fire, windows, flowers, water, and their respective and overlapping connotations of destruction, light, birth, and life.

Ashes exists in the in-between; somewhere in the tension between endings and beginnings; how change is lived through rather than resolved. Unlike questions with no answer, we can always be sure that, from the ashes, new life may spring.

How do you find your subject matter?
My process starts by photographing familiar subjects in my surroundings and, through intuition and subconscious design, leaning into that which symbolically – in some way – mirrors my life at the time. In Ashes, the repeated images of fires, flowers, and windows can be conflated into common themes of loss, change, and resurrection.

What techniques do you use?
I work mostly with analogue cameras and film, often shooting a lot very quickly and without much planning. I swap between different cameras and film stocks a lot. It’s messy and haphazard, but an important part of the process: like writing stream-of-consciousness versus a structured essay. 

Repetition is the only technique I consciously utilise. Through it a subject can be gradually separated from its everyday meaning and become a symbol, a metaphor, or simply the sum of its material parts.

Who are your influences?
I read a lot, and I have very talented friends in a variety of artforms: I find beauty and influence everywhere. That said, music is almost certainly my biggest influence. 

The soundtrack to the creation of Ashes includes: Beethoven’s 9th; ‘To bring you my love’ by PJ Harvey; dry lightning cracking gum trees; TS Eliot’s ‘Ash Wednesday’; wine glasses clinking; Sylvia Plath’s ‘Mystic’;  a match lighting a cigarette; a heavy lock being closed; cicadas…  Most important, however, is the hiss of steam as thick summer raindrops hit hot bitumen beneath your feet as you make the salty walk back home from the sea.