I grew up in Belfast, N. Ireland where I observed my handsome uniformed father sail in and out of my mother’s domestic life. His appearance provoked a ritual. We rushed to see who would be the first to open his sea trunk. Here the promise of exotic trinkets lay among a travel shaving kit, sewing supplies, a wallet of photographs and the crumpled white naval uniform worn in the tropics. Through out my childhood, my father would mark these occasions by photographing us. By the time he retired, and finally came home, my mother, siblings and I had drifted on to our own lives.
In1988, my parents and my niece Sarah died in a fire in the family home in Belfast. The only item that survived intact was my father’s sea trunk. This body of work was almost entirely made from the photographs and other artifacts discovered in the trunk, which had remained closed and in my brother’s care until the mid nineties.

In this work I am re-cycling personal vernacular photography and fragments of detritus that map out my interest in re inventing the family album. Memory is instilled and resonates in the most seemingly banal objects. It is through this investigation that I represent both a connection and a sense of loss.

Sundays At Sea is a series of Iris Prints on watercolor paper created from digital files using family archive material retrieved from my father’s sea trunk and framed without mattes. Image size variable. Frame sizes: 30x30 inches. Work in progress 1999 –2004.