The joys of collaboration
The collaboration between me and my mum Catherine originated when Madrid based artist and curator Maria Cobo, invited me to participate in an exhibition about illness and photography for the Fotomanias photography festival in Malaga. I think originally Maria had in mind a participatory community project, as I have done a lot of this kind of work over the last few years. After some thought I decided against this, but instead had the idea of doing a project with my mum. Catherine, my mum, has lived with M.E. for 25 years, since she was 40 and I was 15.
I am a serial collaborator and among my collaborators have been my 3 brothers, who are all musicians, for various projects over the years. Mum writes fiction and I had always wanted to collaborate with her nothing concrete had ever presented itself as an opportunity till now. When we discussed how we wanted to approach the project, we decided that we didn’t want to focus on the negative aspects and impact of illness, but rather use it as an opportunity for a creative dialogue.
So over a period of one month, from January to February 2011, we worked together to creatively explore together intersections between wellbeing, creativity and family relationships via a playful exchange of photography and text. The work for the exhibition reflects and documents this process and dialogue, presenting a range of photographic and textual elements including a photo dialogue, a photo blog, text, and photocollage alongside an archive of family photographs.
The process has been one of deep creative and personal engagement for us both. Through the simple daily exchange of photographs and text, we learned so much about the mysterious and complex nature of our mother/daughter communication – how much we share, and where we are different.
The project has also been a another opportunity to work with Maria Cobo, which has been a joy. I met Maria in 2002, when she was on Erasmus exchange on the Fine Art course at Leeds Metropolitan University from Madrid Complutense. We struck up a friendship and when I went to Madrid on the Erasmus programme the following year, we ‘swapped’ aspects of the other’s lives – I went to live with her parents in Madrid while she took on my part time job in Yorkshire. Since then we have worked with each other on several projects over the years. Last year, when I curated my first solo project, P.S I Love You, a week long programme of events at Bradford Playhouse, Maria not only showed work in the exhibition but came and spent the week there. Now its my turn to show work at an exhibition Maria is curating – seems to have a lovely symmetry.
Now, as I’m getting all the work ready for the exhibition, I’m looking forward to going to Malaga to install the work, to hang out with Maria, and for my mum to be there for the opening and for us spend some time together. This blog will be a document of the experience.
