The paintings in this show were inspired by an antique brooch given to me by an ex partner, which reads “May the Lord watch over us while you and I are absent one from the other”.

This is the statement I wrote for the catalogue.

"At the time it just seemed romantic, but when I came across the brooch again recently, it felt as if recent events had given it a whole new layer of meaning. Living through a period in world history where so many people are absent before their time, because they were in Bali or the World Trade Centre at the wrong time; or because they were born in Baghdad or Basra, or because they were infected with HIV or SARS; or because they had no access to clean water or too much access to hard drugs; there are too many reasons and too many absences in the world as a result.

So the paintings themselves are about memory, mourning and accidents of fate. They are painted in minor key colours and tones with surfaces which are weathered and aged for the passing of time. They use bits and pieces of found materials, each of which is marked in some way by another person, some evidence of a life lived. The materials are nothing special and nothing precious, just regular day to day junk. But when you cut them out, mix them up and reassemble them, they fall into place and form their own stories.

There are Miss Havisham laces and hand-written notes from people long gone. There are pieces of fabric from garments which marked the high points of other lives, but which have now unravelled into frayed decay. And there are symbols of Christian mourning - funeral notices, wreaths, flowers and birds carrying souls to the next place.

There is a sadness, but also the deep-rooted emotional certainty which acknowledges that the time ‘while you and I are absent one from the other’ will one day come to an end.

friends + family, 2003	single sustainable model, 2003
wrong place, 2003	wrong time, 2003
decompose 1, 2003	decompose II, 2003
chima	mumbai