I’m sitting on the floor surrounded by the chaos that goes along with the installation of a new show. I’ve left the writing of this statement until the very last minute, as usual. I attempted to enlist the skills of a brilliant writer friend of mine to magic up something for me but of course I had left it too late, so now it is up to me to untangle what is going on here. 

What happens in my studio is a continuous process and trying to bookend where a new body of work starts and ends is difficult. I’m not totally certain but I think this collection started while digging around in a dusty antique shop. I happened upon a treasure trove of discarded photo albums. Who were these people? Where did they live? What did they have for breakfast? Where did they spend their holidays? I felt like an explorer entering forgotten worlds and greedily took the time capsules home so I could study them in more detail. 

I spent days trying to solve the mystery of these photographic moments captured over a hundred years ago. Taking tiny black and white images from the 20th century and translating them into full colour paintings in the 21st century, felt like an interesting conversation to explore, even if it was a conversation with ghosts. These visual conversations make up some of the work in the show, I’ll leave it up to you to decide which ones they are. 

Warm regards, 

Kirsten