Dis-locations and Broken Narratives: articulating liminal and interstitial experiences through a series of moving image and mixed media installations

This practice led research explores three video and mixed media artworks created and exhibited between 2006-17. Mariners and Migrants: in Search of Home, (2006) WAVE/ING, (2011/12) and Dear Child, (2016/7) are part of a substantive body of artwork which has been produced since the late discovery of my adoption in 1991. This event and its effect changed both the content and shape of my work reflecting my personal response to the experience of otherness and dis-location identified as, “The feeling of being between places and people, the sense of transience, the experience of seeing the world and one’s place in it from different perspectives.” 1 This led to the creation of multi-layered artworks inspired by narratives of migration and exile and the the development of various imagistic and material strategies which reflect liminality. These include acausal2, non-linear editing and asynchronous multi channel projections and layers of glass and silk within expanded installations. The three main sections of this commentary relate to different elements of the research journey. They cover responses to historic events and narratives, the distinctive use of original archives, the function of physical journeys in the development and making of artworks and the use of interpretive dance to create an embodied response to loss. I would argue that my situated and exploratory practice, applied throughout the development and production process was effective in transforming the effects of dissociation and dissonance3 into innovative imagistic outcomes. This is situated in relation to other artists working with trauma and memory and to key ideas around post adoptive psychology with reference to other feminist theorists. This body of work represents an effective and fluid response to the dis-locations of late discovery which is not principally therapeutic or sociological in intent.