ROSEMARY MCLEOD     catalogue

1 2 3 4 5 6 Thinking of Aunts Aunts were part of the furniture of my childhood, both as real people and as identities referred to, but unknown to me. As a collector of the ephemera of other peoples' lives, I am also a collector/imaginer of their unknown stories. The aunts are an attempt to reconcile memory with found or created objects. The conversation that took place around me as a child resonated with turns of phrase and place-names that were exotic and intriguing to me: some of these are embroidered on the aunts. The bride aunt wears fragments of a century-old bridal wreath and veil, and a scrap of beaded tulle rescued from an evening gown of the same period. She represents nameless aunts who appear in forgotten albums and framed photographs in junk shops, whose images will be thrown away when the frames are recycled. Over the past year I transcribed an aunt's diary from 1937. She was not an aunt I liked; it was a difficult process for that reason; but she emerged as a likeable, intelligent, very much alive person when I had completed the task. That process influenced my decision to make these figures. Almost all of the materials used are vintage, dating from around 1900 to the 1960s. Old suitcases seemed to be suitable plinths for these identities, discovered from imaginary time travel.