2003 Lexicons and Labyrinths

By the Light of My Father's Smile  2003  180 x 120 cm, mixed media

The exhibition/competition was artists response to the human genome project - the mapping of genes.

My entry was a piece I had made in order to process the death of my father. 

I had made a painting, 120 x 180 cm, depicting a new born baby. Its title was Birth. I took this image and reduced it to postage stamps of four tones. I then made this new picture, Death/By the Light of My Father's Smile, out of these four toned postage stamps. My entry was these two works hanging side by side; Birth and Death/By the Light of My Father's Smile

It was only much later that I realised, in the context of the human genome project, the statement the piece was making: the death of birth, through the mapping of genes life could now be made in test tubes.

It was only a year later that my sister made me aware that my fathers nickname, in his youth, had been skull.