Little is known about the nature of long-term effects of loss in childhood and its affective consequences on those who don’t present with obvious serious psychiatric problems. The loss remains hidden and ill-defined for the duration of a lifetime.
Dead Mother, approaches this under-researched subject area, opening up a dialogue between leading practitioners of neurology, psychology, medicine and philosophy, outside the confines of purely scientific enquiry.
How does the loss of a mother manifest itself in a lifetime?
What shape or form does it take?
Where can it be located?
Everyone has a mother. But what does it mean to live without a mother?
Using film, sound, photography, text, and installation, the project will attempt to give a shape and presence to the nature of the absence and the efforts and effects involved in accommodating the loss.
‘15 years ago, it was widely assumed that the vast majority of brain development takes place in the first few years of life. Back then we didn’t have the ability to look inside the living human brain and track development across the lifespan’
Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, 2012
Now we do. Current research in neurology and psychology are discovering how crucial the period of brain development is between the ages of 11 – 24 years. A young adults brain is particularly ‘plastic’ and susceptible to environmental factors, providing significant potential for learning and adaptation, but also vulnerability with respect to mental health.
One of a series of short films made as part of 'Dead Mother' 2014. Supported by Wellcome trust and Arts Council.
One of a series of short films made as part of 'Dead Mother' 2014. Supported by Wellcome trust and Arts Council.
'Does anyone ask you about her any more?'
Goldsmiths, New Cross, London, 2013
A huge thank you to those women who contributed to the days filming. It was an inspirational day.
Autobiographical memories are not distributed equally across the life span. The reminiscence bump refers to increased recall throughout their lifetime by adults of autobiographical memories dating to the period of approximately 15 to 25 years of age.
This reminiscence bump has been suggested to support the emergence of a stable and enduring self.
See Self Centred Memories: The Reminiscent bump and the self, Rathbone C.J, Moulin, C. J. A. and Conway, M. A. (2008)
I'm not a Neuro scientist. Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is and her explanation of Synaptic pruning and adolescent brain development will always be better than mine.
'The subject is important:it is a route to meaning that is not literal. It is an anvil on which the painting is fashioned. Painters look for subjects, and in my case, on this occasion, a subject looked for me'
Quote by Hughie O'Donaghue, Painting/ Memory
The idea started on my fridge door. I took a photograph of my mother who died when I was 14, turned it over and blu tacked it to a photograph of my children who she had never met. I wondered about the space in between that I had created, it certainly wasn't empty. It seemed to represent so many things. The photographs were representational of the boundary to my mothers absence but not an answer to what was in between. I wondered if it was significant that I was an adolescent when she died and I wondered about other peoples spaces.
