Nothing That Happens After We Are Twelve Matters Very Much

This body of work is concerned with the transitional changes of childhood through recent generations, stemming from my observations in the differences between when I was a child and the childhood of my younger siblings today.It appears to me that demands are now placed on children that require themto grow up so quickly whilst simultaneously they are denied the freedom of the childhood i led. It is a nostalgic look back at a time when the early years of growing up were vivid with imagination, adventure and fantasy but above all the freedom to enact those desires was granted. A Time when children were given space to grow, develop their character and learn from the experiences encountered on the way. Yet it also deals with increasing, sometimes extreme anxieties felt from parents in the era in which we live. In today’s western society children are held back from these adventures or explorations of spaces for their own perceived safety.

In the past twenty five years there have been no more reported cases of child abduction than there were in the previous twenty five. Yet we are constantly being made aware of the dangers that face children should they wander from the safety of the home and its technological entertainments that act as the substitute for the most natural entertainment; play. A bombardment of media attention and coverage to such cases of abduction in the past two decades has resulted in a sense of anxiety permeating through society and into parents’ protective guard. Although cases are extremely rare, when they do happen it is no longer a story that lasts for merely a week in the national press. Instead it is scrutinized through the eyes of the media and kept as its main story for many months, as seen recently with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

The images in this body of work are playing on both sides of these feelings. They are images of childhood fantasy, exploration and freedom yet they also deal with undercurrents of the uncomfortable and anxious. As a tool for the sense of looking back, the images often work as an irregular narrative, breaking up any narrative sequences through the shift in time, season and dress. The spaces that the child occupies, to an adult, might suggest a sense of danger and raise caution but, to the child, allow for an extension of their imagination and fantasy. There is an exploration of the anxiety and tension created when children are seen to occupy these peripheral areas. This allows the innocence of the child’s adventure and play to be questioned as a sense of unease builds, within the adult, in witnessing these scenarios.