Archiving Grief / Grief as Archive
‘know that grief is a thing you can craft’ (Tamarin Norwood)
Please note that pages and posts address themes that may be distressing to some readers.
This site offers an overview of my current research, which focuses on how we tell stories of grief. The projects represented share an interest in how we often turn to places and objects to help us make sense out of loss. Grief is commonly seen as an individual and potentially isolating experience, though I believe that places and objects both connect the bereaved to others and help others in turn relate to their experience.
The projects that are gathered here experiment across different forms and media, often working in collaboration. I am interested in the ways in which mourning commonly involves the crafting of an archive, which differs from the legal and medical records contained in the official archive of a death. This affective archive might contain objects that belonged to the person who died, mementoes from a place that has been a source of comfort in grief, or tributes for the deceased. The projects reflect in different ways on this creative process of archiving feeling.
This research addresses complex forms of grief that are culturally sensitive. One project focuses on suicide bereavement, based on my own experience of losing my sister, while another works with parents who have lost a twin at birth. My most recent project focuses on the placing of objects and messages at a grassroots memorial site at The Angel of the North in Gateshead.