BRIDGIT ANDERSON – Christine’s Jewellery Box – 10 Oct–4 Nov, 2023
Christine’s Jewellery Box is about the loss of my mother and a reclaiming of memories.
In 2018, I inherited my father’s garden.
Three years earlier he had said ‘my gardening days are over, do what you like and make it your own.’
In one corner sits a weather-beaten greenhouse.
Not just a place for my plants to thrive, this is also a refractive and dispersive ‘lightbox’;
a place where the ever changing weather and filtered light bring a jewel-like quality to
the world within.
I was seven years old when my mother Christine died suddenly, with no explanation given.
As a child I loved to wear her jewellery, an activity only permitted when my father wasn’t
around. These photographs contain objects from my childhood and others that were
given to my mother and then passed on to me.
At the time of her death I didn’t ask questions.
As I grew up it felt like an impossible task.
The freedom to look closely at what had been left behind came with the death of my father.
Bridgit Anderson studied photography at the Ilam School of Fine Arts, UOC before moving to London in 1985, where she made
her home by the River Thames in Rotherhithe, just south of Tower Bridge. It was during this time that she developed a lifelong
interest in 19th century photographic processes and practice.
Catalogue available for purchase $20