Conference: Mourning and Melancholia

Jessa Fairbrother
Conversations with my mother

Synopsis
Conversations with my mother is my work on maternal loss, made during the period in which I lost my remaining parent to cancer while simultaneously experiencing miscarriage and failed fertility treatments. I will perform the text piece to this work, accompanying projected images of original hand-made photographs which are burned, stitched and hand-marked.

Jessa Fairbrother is an artist who explores the familiar and the personal, where yearning, performance and a needle meet each other in photography. After obtaining a BA in English from Durham University, studying at drama school and working in regional journalism, she later lectured in photography before completing an MA in Photographic Studies from the University of Westminster in 2010. She is the recipient of bursaries and honourable mentions in the UK, Europe and Canada and had a solo show in 2017 at the Vittoria Street Gallery in Birmingham City University. In 2016 she produced Conversations with my mother as a limited edition Artist Book which is held in the international collections of Yale Center for British Art (US) as well as libraries at the Victoria and Albert Museum (UK) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (US).