Act Your Age (2017)

Moving-image, 4:16.

Drawing on Donald Winnicott’s idea of the transitional object, this work explores ideas related to arrested development and the social pressure to “act your age”. Often in the form of a toy or soft material, a transitional object bridges the gap between infant and mother during the period of time when a baby starts to differentiate between itself and other objects and therefore separating from its mother. However, disrupted of this transitional period can lead to psychological and developmental issues that can persist to adulthood. Whilst comfort and destruction are inevitably linked, as the separation between mother and child must contain both these elements, this film also explores the greater disruptive power of traumatic experience on a child’s development and the difficulties of conforming to social norms in adulthood that come as a result.

This film was screened at the Fruitmarket Gallery in 2017, and John Byrne Award (Online) in 2018.