All the things [you] left behind, 2022
 

Left to Right:

 

Afterschool snacks, 2022

Oil and enamel spray-paint on canvas

25 x 30 cm

 

Where you were happiest, 2022

Oil and enamel spray-paint on canvas

75 x 50 cm

 

Packed away, 2022

Oil and enamel spray-paint on canvas

25 x 30 cm

 

Abandoned sights, 2022

Oil and enamel spray-paint on canvas

27 x 35 cm

 

Here you rest, 2022

Oil and enamel spray-paint on canvas

25 x 30 cm

 

This work was developed on Kaurna Country

Location: DB7-05

 

The belongings of those who are no longer with us. The remaining objects that symbolise the dead. The possessions that are left behind, baring traces of their life. Simple items we attach ourselves to, clinging to memories, reminding us of our loss and longing. All the things [you] left behind details five realistically painted canvases, presenting the possessions of my nonna, collected after her death in 2014. By processing my loss through self-reflection, analysis and recollection, my practice explores themes of grief and memory. Through painting, I search to materialise loss and the notion of ‘absence-presence’; the tension between the literal absence of the deceased and their possession’s inner presence subconsciously created by the griever. My work aims to heighten how objects imbue meaning and traces of a person’s life, merging uncanny familiarities between life and death and ever-present loss. With each canvas withholding its own story and memory, my rendering of colour, fragmenting forms, manipulated representation and transparencies with paint hopes to reveal notions of isolation, loss, and longing.