"A man is always a teller of tales,
he lives surrounded by his stories
and the stories of others ...."
Jean-Paul Sartre
My graduation show work explored the way in which the stories we tell shape our identity - what we reveal and what we choose to hide or embellish. The work was prompted by recent events in my own life which gave me reason to doubt my own identity and to question the extent to which my family history had been 'embroidered' in order to conceal the truth. Extensive research into autobiography in both literature and art informed my work and stitching (which forms an integral part of my own life story) was used to literally embroider and conceal the life stories of others. The book pages tore and disintegrated as the stitches cut into them, suggesting the way in which constant embellishment can cause our own stories to fall apart.
The final work consisted of 64 pages, covering an entire wall of the gallery space, and each page was pinned to the wall with dressmaking pins. The stitching was made using a large reel of thread belonging to my late father (he was a tailor, shirt maker and pattern cutter) and I continued to stitch until the reel was empty.