Current Exhibitions

This body of work, the seventh and final series of A Cycle of Life, is a reflection upon death and legacies. The photographs were taken during a journey to Scotland, my cultural homeland, and ensuing travel to London and Italy. It was my first trip back to the old country since I was a child.

My parents migrated from Scotland in 1965. They left behind their friends and family to seek a new life on the other side of the planet. Nevertheless, Aberdeen remained their home and although they would both return to Scotland on several occasions they would never again live there. In my father’s last years, illness prevented him from returning and following his death in 2000 the need I felt to return became increasingly important. However it still took 10 years before my recent and brief return. Thankfully I was in a position to take my mother with me, on what was most likely her final trip home.

The castles and ruins that pepper this series are located across Aberdeenshire, from which my family originates. They represent an era gone but not forgotten, and are interspersed with images taken during the same trip that suggest or have overtones of mortality. Two images subtitled Angusfield Avenue refer to the house in which my grandparents lived out their lives and in which one of my uncles now resides. Two features of the house I recall from a childhood visit—my grandmother’s raspberry bushes and my grandfather’s shed—have both subsequently been removed.

Another image in the series depicts a statue of Dr Edward Jenner, the man accredited with developing the smallpox vaccine and sometimes referred to as the ‘Father of Immunology’. Smallpox decimated the human population for millennia prior to the development of Dr Jenner’s vaccine in the late 1700s, and indeed the word vaccine is derived from the latin word for cow (vacca), in reference to Dr Jenner’s research and trial with the related cowpox virus. Smallpox was declared eradicated by the World Health Organisation in 1979, signalling the end of a virus that had a mortality rate of about 35%, including an estimated 300-500 million deaths in the 20th century. It was a virus unique to humans and the only virus that has ever been eliminated by humankind.

* * *

One Flash of Light is taken from a line in David Bowie’s song Ashes to Ashes. My elder siblings regularly played his music during my childhood and while this particular song was not my favourite—as young child I found the melancholic Pierrot clown imagery in the then new format of its accompanying music video rather creepy—it was always on the playlist at home.

The connection to burial services was clear and easy. Ashes to Ashes was part of the ongoing drama playing out in Bowie’s art as he drew to a close the life of his character Ziggy Stardust (the song with the same moniker is a personal favourite from this part of Bowie’s oeuvre). ‘Major Tom’ would have been an easy choice for the series’ title but it was too obvious. Ashes to Ashes references not only a changing society as the 70s drew to a close, but also shifts in Bowie’s own life. It suggests an end to the excesses flowing from his introduction to the American music scene: a move towards a more mature and less hedonistic way of life.

I planned this body of work for about three years. After booking tickets and making travel arrangements my partner and I discovered we were soon to have our first child. The dynamics of our trip changed dramatically, as did our future plans. And Bowie’s song became an increasingly appropriate point of reference…