All of us, at some point in our lives, will experience the loss of someone close to us, and we will all deal with that loss in our own way. It can be difficult to articulate our feelings, even to ourselves – they can be a complicated mixture of grief, anger, frustration, and a sense of something missing.

This project is called At a Loss, because it has different meanings: at the point of a loss, which is the obvious one, but also: unsure what to do; cut adrift, perplexed; nonplussed, which is also a recurring theme in the aftermath of loss and the dealing with grief. Quite often powerful emotions can be triggered by the discovery of something connected to the one who is lost – a scrap of paper with familiar handwriting, an article of clothing, a lock of hair, a faded photograph. In the aftermath of death, we are often banjaxed by the weight of dealing with the objects left behind.

The At a Loss project has its roots in the death of the mother of artist and project curator Inga Burrows, and the exhibition shows some of the creative ways that objects can be used to express the feelings for which words are just not enough.

“Deciding what to do with the material possessions belonging to a lost loved one can be overwhelming for many of us, regardless of how much time has passed and in what circumstances our loved one died”, Burrows explains. “As the one female amongst my siblings, I took charge of the sifting through my mother’s clothes, her hats, glasses, crockery, underwear, hairbrushes, jewellery, bedding etc. Seeing her belongings laid out on her living room floor and deliberating over what to hold onto and what to let go of, the heaps of my mother’s stuff morphed into art materials before my eyes, my imagination was activated. How might I use her things to make something that would allow me to make sense of our relationship?  

“This question led me to wonder how many other artists there might be, elsewhere in the world, who have felt creatively inspired to utilise their lost loved one’s possessions as material for art making? It is my curiosity in addressing this question that gave rise to the At a Loss project, and consequently my first experience of curating a group show.”

The exhibition at Art Central Gallery, in Barry, is the result of an international open call, inviting artists either to submit existing work, related to the theme of loss, or to make a proposal for a new commissioned work to show alongside the other selected work. The pay-off for getting one of the commissions was a commitment to participate in a series of on-line dialogues with the other commissioned artists. During these dialogues, artists took it in turns to talk about their work and open up discussions around their approaches to making the work and the wider themes around loss and grief. For some artists, these conversations had a significant impact on the way that their work developed, for others, the experience of sharing work and thinking had other outcomes, but all participants seemed to find this a really interesting and often very supportive framework for making and discussing work, despite the very necessary at-a-distance nature of the video meeting, which enabled artists from across the world to come together to share their work-in-progress and their ideas.

Georgia Holmer felt a shift in what she was making, because of those conversations. Her work is a response to a delayed tidal wave of grief at the death of her mother, which crashed over her as she finally opened boxes of her mother’s things, years after her death. “As I unpacked the boxes, I found so many bits of her; her schoolgirl notebooks with impeccable handwriting, her research from her never completed PhD, letters, photos of her as a girl and young woman, a desiccated lipstick, and, shockingly, a long, still glossy, swathe of her chestnut brown hair.

“What I was exploring through this process, beyond emotional healing and a deeper understanding of my mother as an individual, were my own feelings of indignity tied to sickness and dying and to cremation. My intention for this project was to exhibit this work as a series of photographs of the artefacts I created with accompanying narratives in the form of letters to my mother. This body of work I had titled A Reliquary for my Mother.”

However, Holmer found that, as a result of taking part in the conversations with other artists, her work evolved into something quite different: “My intention shifted and I decided to develop a new piece of work, a larger scale sculpture that – unexpectedly for me – reflected a very different understanding and experience of

my mother’s passing. I am certain it was the connection with the group and our dialogues that led to this new work.”

Maddox Pratt reflects, “When having these sorts of personal and emotional conversations about art and grief, it can be hard to pinpoint how exactly it has caused your work to change. I’m sure my sculpture would look slightly different without these conversations. Probably less bone-like in places. But I cannot say exactly who said what and when that makes me think that. The dialogues linger. The other artist’s work and words stay in my mind and, I am sure, permeate my work without my being fully aware”. 

Emily Underwood-Lee says that she was challenged to think about loss, and the representation of grief, in new and interesting ways. “I’ve been particularly interested in some of the conversations about the materials people are working with and the textural and formal qualities of the works people are making, which was a surprise to me and something I didn’t expect to get from online conversations.” For At a Loss, she has collaborated with Jodie Allinson on a durational process, the final documentation of which is shared in the exhibition. Allinson adds that “…meanings can emerge through dialogue with someone else. The dialogues definitely impacted on our conversations and perspective on the work Emily and I were doing. I was excited to do this process as part of a larger set of people to see what emerged”.

Each artist has their individual approach to making work: some work systematically, others intuitively. Working at the site of her baby’s grave in the Garw Valley, near Bridgend, Helen Acklam felt, “… led to a forensic and spiritual connection with the earth and a bodily understanding of motherhood and grief.  Working with living materials, performance and site-specificity, the work is rooted in the landscape, sharing stories and revealing connections between personal experience and social, political and geological implications of this post-industrial, derelict landscape where I grew up. 

“Connecting my body with the materials that make up this landscape, I have had a growing sense of interconnectedness and how I have been shaped by this land. This turn outwards has created a strong sense of place in my practice and opened up opportunities to collaborate with other artists and researchers.  Sharing work and talking with the group, over this period of preparation for the exhibition, has helped me acknowledge the complex mix of feelings surrounding grief.”  

 “Traditionally, there are many ways to process grief”, Michal Harada observes. “The fundamentals of most ways are to create time and space and be present with it. I believe this frame is important, but as a secular woman and as an artist, I feel that I need to have the freedom to carefully listen to myself and see what are the materials that I shall work with – ideas, feelings, memories, substance, shapes and composition. I think that visual response is a language that I can speak more fluently, I feel that the inner voice is speaking. Taking music as another example, it is clear that to write a farewell song to someone or something that is gone, has a lot of meaning – no need for explanation. It is the language of the heart and to sing that song can offer a way to be present with it, so the visual response is the same – just another song.”

Valda Jackson’s work for this exhibition is a development of previous work using archival material, but this iteration is more personal. “Handle With Care (two) is an excavation of my own archives. Work made over decades, most of which contain elements of loss, of grief that drifts like a hurting child, who seems to wander across each page, sheet, or canvas, sitting unattended in every sculpture; yet she has been given no relief. Glanced over.

“This further layering of archival images, some of which are public art commissions, such as Girl’s Pinafores – completed while I was caring for, and then grieving the loss of a sister – these additional layers recognise works created, and marks made within grief; it is acknowledging the broad spectrum of loss, including separations and migration. In this work, I begin to look towards that wandering lost child, maybe to rescue her, or at least to be accountable.”

Dagmar Radmacher’s two-pronged work pulls together a series of objects to connect the loss of her mother, three miscarriages and the death of two cats: “In My Mother’s Coat, I draw direct parallels between precious final fur clippings of my cats to the ethical challenge of inheriting my mother’s fur coat. Two urns, in which my cat’s ashes are kept, are visually reminiscent of breasts, in turn referring to the breast cancer that killed my mother. I wanted to return the coat to nature. The nature my mother loved most and wished to be buried in. This wish remained just that, defeated by rules and regulations and only fulfilled now, albeit just symbolically, by taking the coat to the forest and enabling this interaction with me, nature and the item of clothing.

“There is repetitive folding and unfolding, discovering and hiding. Care and treasure. The very domestic action of folding fabric for storage also defines much of my mother’s life as a proud and capable housewife. My hands rest, fold and turn over in both my mother’s coat as well as in Tschüss Mama! ich hab’ Dich lieb [goodbye Mum! I love you], mirroring the action my mother performed so often. When I think of my mother, I inevitably think of her hands, and even when she occasionally enters my dreams, it is the hands that tell the story.”

While all these works are responses to very personal experiences and emotions, all of the artists aim to offer something that connects with their audiences in a more universal way.  

Family photos punctuate Richard Bowers’ Sketch for an ‘Electra’, where his personal grief over the loss of his childhood through the deaths of his parents is set against the tale of Electra, and her grief is brought into the gallery in a two-screen video work. Caitriona Dunnett also uses old family photographs to recreate her grandfather’s Scottish garden, in a series of Lumen prints of fruit, flowers and vegetables for The Lost Garden. Sean Vicary began The Nose while his mother was still alive, but the video became a creative way of processing his grief, after her death, in an animation of the flowers in her garden. Rebecca Farkas‘ video aims to create, “a calm space to think about how grief touches our lives and can only exist because of the love that came before it”, while Maja Irene Bolier’s Did I Mention, is a video about long-distance grieving. Bolier was forced to attend her aunt’s funeral virtually, but the technology failed: “By then I had already decided that I was going to make a film about the experience. The whole thing was so absurd, yet so heart-breaking at the same time.”

Mum’s The Word  revolves around the theft of Inga Burrows’ mother’s handbag, stolen as she was dying at home. The messy ugliness of the theft distracting from what should have been the beginning of the grieving process, and while the installation contains objects that show facets of Burrows’ mother, it also contains references to the hazards faced by vulnerable people, who are at the mercy of others.

Simona Muzzi photographed her late mother’s clothes for Bond. “I made a photographic series giving the pain a personal interpretation through the self-portrait. Like animals, for which smell has a fundamental importance in mutual recognition, I found the smell in their clothes and marked the territory of my future by wearing them and taking them with me on my journey.” Rosie Strickland’s sonic sculptural installation is an act of ecological grieving and marks the loss of biodiversity. “This was the first time I had worked with sound as I found it to be a stirring and effective medium to communicate the complex issue of ecological grief, when we are numb to so many images of environmental violence.”

And, in the end, that is the crux of this project; to use traces and remnants to articulate feeling for which words just aren’t enough.

    Emma Geliot  

Exhibiting artists: Helen Acklam, Richard Bowers, Maja Irene Bolier, Inga Burrows, Caitriona Dunnett, Rebecca Farkas, Michal Harada, Georgia Holmer, Valda Jackson, Simona Muzzi, Maddox Pratt, Dagmar Radmacher, Rosie Strickland, Sean Vicary, Emily Underwood Lee & Jodie Allinson.

Project Manager/Co-Curator: Inga Burrows; Co-curator: Tracey Harding

Link to Art Central on Vale website: https://www.valeofglamorgan.gov.uk/en/enjoying/Arts-and-Culture/Art-Central-Gallery.aspx