Nature's Endurance, Artworks, The Everybody Gallery,Halifax 10 March - 5 May 2023
'Hauntings'
25 x 35 x 2.5 cm
Silver Gelatin print on recycled packaging, using handmade glass slides.
Both the glass negative and print are developed in a compost developer sourced from Chelsea Physic Garden.
'Hauntings 1' is a work made whilst Eileen was artist in residence at The Chelsea Physic Garden in London. It is part of a new body of work focusing on snowdrop plants, which centres on the many complicated and at times contradictory traditions, metaphors and scientific connections associated with this plant. Reusing medicinal packaging, in this instance headache and migraine packaging, alludes to the healing connections of this plant that were first mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey, as a protection against memory loss. It has been used traditionally as a cure for headaches by rubbing the plant on the forehead. Science has now identified chemicals in the plant, galantamine, as being an effective drug and is currently used in the treatment of Alzheimer's. Using recycled packaging and decayed matter in the making of the work and the transformation of this into a working darkroom developer in Eileen's kitchen at home, opens up questions regarding value, labour, representation and the archive.