To light something or make it bright again evokes thoughts of brightness overpowering darkness; of warmth and perhaps even, of festivity and rejoicing. To relume can also mean to give spiritual or intellectual illumination and elucidation. Light is the natural agent that stimulates the sense of sight.

My art practice deals with matters close to home. I am interested in growth and change, both physical and emotional and also in how one thing can be connected to another. I am an artist/mother who often chooses to work with those closest to me – my immediate family.

I have come to view conventional religions with disbelief, suspicion and scepticism. God as simulacra. Maybe I have replaced God with a deeper appreciation of those closest to me. I see a spirituality within them illuminated by their human qualities. The lights with which their bodies are draped are an allegory for this elucidation.

The series is divided into two groups. One with rich reds and yellows and the other in blues and violets. They are haunting in their initial abstractness as the figures emerge from the shadows. The negative space in these images is as important as the subjects. The viewer is aware of what is absent in each image. Relume consists of lambda prints, which while produced by digital output, have had little manipulation, apart from those that would take place in a conventional dark room. Various types of lights were used in this series. Shot on 35ml slide film; the photographs were taken in the dark using the glow from the lights themselves to expose the film. The resultant images are what the lights have revealed to us.

In terms of the relationship between this body of work and other contemporary art, photographic artists such as Polexini Papapetrou, Sally Mann, Ella Dreyfus and Anne Noble are of interest. These artists are also mothers who have explored their relationship with their children through the photographic lense. Philosophers and thinkers such as Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes and Maurice Merleau-Ponty have also provided me with inspiration and direction during my research and artmaking process. Baudrillard’s theories on the simulacra and simulation are especially relevant to my investigation of spirituality. Is God merely a simulation? Roland Barthes work Camera Lucida is also of interest as he discusses the very nature of photography, truth and reality. The phenomology of art and Merleau-Ponty’s theories on the experience of viewing art have also provided me with a deeper understanding of my artmarking.