Art is an action against death. It is a denial of death.
Jacques Lipchitz 

There was just a single moment of near contact with my father when I was 7 years old; as his hand suddenly reached through the letterbox of my mother's front door. He died 8 years after this brief encounter took place. It would not be another 12 years until I would learn of his death, from the mouth of my grandmother as we wandered through the aisles of our local supermarket.

Over the proceeding years, discovering information about this abstract man proved near impossible - with family members only revealing fragments of who he might have been and what he might have been like. In an attempt to uncover this immaterial man I collaborate with clairvoyants to trace an impression of my estranged father. The information gathered is translated within a visual framework where psychic drawings, automated writing and attempts to communicate with my farther are integrated.

This work explores the notion of perspective and what arises in the absence of evidence for the creation of truth. All characters involved in this searching provide subjective, distinct, self-serving and often contradictory versions of the same narrative, developing a fractured story that is constructed in co-creation with the mediums involved. The findings are rooted in both fact and fiction where what is revealed is a reimagined landscape that enables me to construct a sacred yet lost relationship. The project is both multifaceted and fractured, visually reflecting the reality of the situation it aims to communicate. The work looks upon dynamics in family relations, including hidden histories and the various ways both avoidance and the denial of death is manifested within such narratives.

With this, the methodology of working with clairvoyance and photography develops an opportunity to manifest the immaterial and to utilise the photographic ability to transcribe history, allowing one to materialise and communicate what is absent and invisible. Are You There examines the missed-relationship with my absent farther through close collaboration; creating mystical possibilities and fabricated memories, pushing the limits of reality by exploring a world created by the clairvoyants through their ritualistic practice and divination. Although there cannot be any physical involvement between the subject of my dead father and the camera, I continue to delve into the concept that the “medium is the message” which permits me to transcend the wanting and earning to know a father I can never meet.

This project is a multimedia work - audio and video can be viewed on the dedicated website here.