TOAST, 2022

This is a selection of photographs (small shovel, tea scoop, tin box, chicken plate) from an artist’s book that records a number of objects from White’s parent’s home in Ireland, left after their deaths in 2015 and 2020. These serve as a reminder of a life lived with these objects and are a celebration of their lives. In other words, a toast.

The Family and Other Ties exhibition celebrates the ten-year anniversary of the Family Ties Network (FTN), a research group of artists, filmmakers and writers who explore memory, space, place, and the family in photography and moving image. The show features works by seven FTN co-ordinators alongside photographs and books by nineteen artists, selected from an open call to the wider network. Many of these works reflect on what is meant by family in the aftermath of the global pandemic. Consequently, haunting stories of absence, trauma, and loss are interwoven with notions of cultural identity, feminist revisions of personal histories and the celebrations and challenges of modern family life.