'Silent Generations' Alliance Francaise, ACT  2002

Silent Generations is an exhibition that draws on photographs from family albums - my own and those of friends and relatives - to reveal some of the intrigues and ironies surrounding black/white relations within families, and to make hidden histories visible. My work focuses on the celebration of survival, the discovery of family secrets and the peeling back of layers, rather than on the suffering and trauma that accompanied the process of assimilation. I used my mother as the key person for whom I witnessed the truth evolving the fragments of half truths falling into place; the uncles who were dark because they worked too long in the sun; and the separations. Shoeboxes of photographs revealed the costumes of assimilation; the fairy outfit; the fur trimmed coat; the ceremonial dress of the big day out; hat, gloves and handbag; the coiffed and tamed hair; and the sculptured body.

My journey, while celebratory and positive, is also about anxiety and displacement. This is seen in the awkward juxtaposition of black and white figures alienated from their highly coloured environments - the shallow space pressing the bodies like exotic butterflies in a specimen slide, and the sense of playing dress ups in someone else's clothes - sometimes playful, sometimes imposed. References to interior design, architectural features, women's crafts, and photography combined with allusions to the painterly surfaces of the great Flemish and Baroque artists give way to a personal and vernacular visual language that lies outside the more predictable political references associated with this topic.