Project

is a photo media project and photobook concerned with family violence and intergenerational trauma. The project is an exploration of my mother’s experiences during her 20-year relationship with my father. During these tumultuous twenty years, my mother moved house approximately ten times. The first move was to escape my father’s stalking of her; the second move was when he kidnapped her, and made her pregnant; subsequent moves after she was pressured into marriage, were due to his unstable work history, his gambling and alcoholism. Since their separation in the 1980s followed by his death in a car accident, my mother has volunteered in outer suburban natural bush reserves, removing environmental weeds so as to promote the growth of native plants. She is now in her 90s and her own beautiful garden is kept scrupulously weed free.

Throughout the project my mother’s battle against weeds is paralleled with her resistance to domestic abuse.

The contrast between my father’s charming facade in public, and his violence and coercive control in private is seen in the metaphor of the black nightshade (Solanum Nigram) which have an attractive appearance but harbour diseases and pests which destroy other plants. When making this work I replicated the obsessive stalking behaviour of my father, tracking environmental weeds in our local area, and scrutinising photographs in our neglected family albums. My conflicted role as traumatised witness and confidante to both my parents is intimated by relationships between contemporary and archival photographic images and documents. Complexity and ambiguity are exposed in a process of repairing traumatic history.