'You lost your mum at 23, what about me?'

Crushed Canvas 

2018

So tell me about your mother, has she made an your impact on your life? Quoting Sigmund Freud 'If it's not one thing, it's your mother', suggesting that our mothers really do shape us. With this in mind when I was asked to make a piece for a pop up exhibit for the Freud museum I couldn't help myself but talk about my own mother, as both Sigmund and Anna Freud has research with mother relationships. During the summer my relationship with my mother became broken and now we no longer speak, like for most people this was a bit traumatic for me. A person that I used to be a carer for, no longer wants or needs my help, I lost not only my mother but something that I was responsible for.

Yet in a conversation with Marley the person I am working with in this project with, I stated I remember everything awful my mother has said to me. This is not unusual for humans to do this, the negative bias is when are brain is more likely to remember negative situations than positives and have more activity in the brain. Whilst there is some discussion to why this is, some say this might be due to when we was evolving. By remembering negative things, we are less likely to do them again, or be prepared for if it does happen again.

Like I've said in pervious works the idea of the auto biographical artist isn't something new, and the idea of the artist exposing points of their life's do appeal the audience and you can start to relate to them. Probably the most poignant artist to do this is Tracy Emin , and in her first solo show 'My major retrospective' she show a collection of items from photos, unsent letters, paintings, drawing and much more, truly exposing herself to the audience judgment. But it also it creates conversation, that we not feel happy to do without someone exposing themselves. 

As you can see in the image, I have put a quote next to every age of my year. Each of these quote are from my mother that she has said to me. Some are loving, whilst others are nasty. I wanted to make this, not to exploit my mother, but to open up this conversation with people who have had turmoil relationships with their mothers.