'The Yorkshire Moors' series explores a performative and cathartic response to my experiences of healthcare politics from the age of 13. The self-portraits act as a central focus, but a heavy influence from Bronte novels and my own cultural roots remain equally as fundamental. The body of work has the potential to prompt a critical enquiry into women's healthcare, confronting today's societal factors beyond what is presented within the frame.
Shortly after Christmas last year, my mum and I drove up to the Moors. Living in Wakefield, we’ve taken the dogs for countless walks using the Yorkshire Moors’ beauty as our backdrop. It was the landscape I grew up to know and love. We parked the car and sat for a while, sifting through eight years of medical notes – handpicking the most antagonistic. We laughed with relief, seeking to find humour in what was once despair. We’re just that kind of family I suppose. We strung the notes up on a makeshift washing line in the bleak landscape, the wind was vicious but the performance grounded us. The photographs capture a therapeutic performance for both me and my mum. She’s not pictured but we still felt very much like the intertwined pairing we were always perceived as. It became almost conclusive for those years of dismissal and misdiagnosis. We’d grown to be seen as one entity, both as problematic as each other and our lives slowly became careful. We’d tread lines finer than those I walk between. My mum picks one particular hospital letter to read to me, a repetition of ‘The Mother’ – each time a capital T.
So, as the notes dance in the wind, I am pictured weaving between the very fine lines.