DRESSUPS DAY FOR FUTURISTS

Oil on canvas
103 x 123 cm

As a child, I have a vivid memory of my dad handing us a metal scraper to help remove the many layers of wallpaper from my parents’ bedroom wall. My siblings quickly lost interest, but I was captivated by the task — each strip revealing another era of colour and pattern beneath. It was my first glimpse into the idea that a house holds stories, and that others had lived and dreamed there before us. Looking back, I see it as an early sign of my lifelong curiosity for art and interior design.

This painting revisits that childhood home — a place that continued to reappear in my dreams well into my twenties. In each dream, my parents had purchased the house back, and we returned to that safe, familiar space. Leaving our hometown at the age of ten was both a traumatic yet important experience, shaping who I would become.

The central figure, a mother, wears family photographs as a kind of memory cap — which resembles the wooden oval frames that once lined our walls. I remember two wooden frames holding the Virgin Mary and Jesus - the quintessential catholic families artwork in the 60s and 70s.

However this work speculates on what childhood might have looked like if AI had existed then — how imagination, communication, and creativity would have shifted.  I always loved fancy dress parties and wearing the costumes handmade by my creative mother. 

At the heart of the painting, drawn faintly in pencil, lies an innocent note from a child to her mother — a message sent, this time, through chat GPT, which in my view provokes many unanswered questions about the future of AI.