Conception is a body of work that has unfolded over the last five years. Some pieces completed recently, others reawakened after long periods of being stuffed under my bed. It began, and ultimately returned, to the same place: my dining room table.

This work has not come easily. It’s been a struggle to establish a studio practice, and harder still to silence the critical voice that often meets me there. That voice, persistent and overwhelming, has held me back for years. But with time and care, I’ve begun to hear another voice: one that is brave, strong, and true. It’s the voice of my younger self, the child who once sat on these same yellowwood benches, fearless with her paintbrush, certain in her joy. Conception is a collaboration, a quiet reclaiming.

I combine layered ink washes, meticulous pen work, and reimagined photographic images from my personal archive. Beginning each piece with loose, fluid gestures, letting ink find its way, I return with pen to make detailed, repetitive marks. The process is meditative and slow, offering moments of presence and clarity. Over time, I’ve come to understand this method as both aesthetic and therapeutic, a space where I meet myself honestly.

Conception weaves themes of rites of passage:  birth, youth, adolescence, motherhood, and death, as cycles that shape identity. Reflecting a journey of returning to myself, through memory, image, and mark-making. Together we recolour memory, weaving play with precision, curiosity with care.

The photographs I revisit are old but unfinished stories, recoloured, reworked, and transformed. In that transformation lies the heart of Conception: turning memory, and sometimes pain or grief, into something vivid, tactile, and new.

The exhibition offers a space to witness the tension between fear and creativity, memory and renewal, doubt and expression. It is about the quiet power of creative persistence. In recolouring the past, in transforming memory into colour, I have found ways to move forward.

There is something about being underwater that makes me feel both incredibly present, but also safe and tremendously separate from everything.

I was drawn to a literal interpretation of the theme 'current' and felt compelled to immerse myself in the sea for these shots.

I had borrowed a Nikon camera in an underwater housing and once I was in the water I quickly realised I didn't know what I was doing. The water was murky and kept pushing me around in surges with the tide. Those first few times in the water, I was so out of my depth, not only being pushed around, but also trying to figure out where the buttons on the Nikon were was a very frustrating process.

I then decided to buy a simple underwater bag and began to shoot with my Canon, which I am much more familiar with and the images began to get clearer, but funnily enough – less interesting.

Those first images I managed to get were blurry and abstract and remained the most evocative to me. So I have ended up where I began with these ghost-like images that, to my mind, best convey the fleeting and transient moments that I experienced underwater. These images open a dialogue on the interpretations of 'current' on different levels; firstly the literal current of the sea, which I experienced while photographing and secondly, capturing the current moment as an ephemeral and haunting image that speaks more to a feeling than a detail of the present moment.