Too close to home?

Martin’s work reflects on bereavement, grief and mourning.Using the particular and specific experience of the deaths of her parents and focusing upon their 1930 semi-detached suburban home, a time capsule of artisan working class life, reflective nostalgia becomes a testimony to a lost generation. In Acts of Reparation (2008) Martin embodies both of her parents within their home, re-imagining a lost past through phototherapeutic re-enactments. In these transformative acts of performing another, she reconsidered the complexities and contradictions of their lives with a gentler perspective, inflected with loss.

Rosy Martin (born 1946) is an artist-photographer, psychological-therapist, workshop leader, lecturer and writer. She explores the relationships between photography, memory, identities and unconscious processes using performative self-portraiture, still life photography and video. From 1983, with Jo Spence, she pioneered re-enactment phototherapy, which explores the psychic and social construction of identities through embodiment. She has exhibited internationally and published widely since 1985. Her practice explores issues including gender, sexualities, ageing, class, desire, memory, location, family dynamics, shame, bereavement, loss, grief and reparation.