The Breathing Grid series of works were presented at the 2022 Graduate Show at the Byron School of Art.
These works were explorations of breath at critical moments of arrival and departure, exploring volumetric variation and circumstances of breath cycles. Two large wall hung works I Held My Breath as You Were Leaving (I & II), are mapped breath cycles as expressions of held space, or perhaps suspended time, while the electrical impulses of the human body fade, once breathing has ceased. Here grief is documented as life fades prompting a consideration leaving, held breath and the dissolution of connection.
Conversely, First Embrace maps the shared quality of a newborn's first breath; breath cycles of mother and child simultaneously felt as physical separation approaches. This work is a meditation on the abstract symmetry of firsts and lasts.
I am interested in moments of maternal documentation and observation that signify parental achievement, the moments we are asked to record in a western cultural context; first similes, steps, words, days. The works prompts the viewer to contemplate what the firsts are, how they are remembered and what or who that documentation serves.