Sharon Boothroyd’s tableaux are recreations based on remembered words spoken to Separated Fathers by their children. After gathering the subjects’ memories, Boothroyd produced visual representations of these phrases, drawing on emotions the child may have been experiencing at the time.
The highly fabricated images incorporate elements of fantasy in their precise construction, settings and use of actors. An idealised version of reality is conveyed through exaggerating conventional locations into filmic versions of themselves. The artifice of the photograph is highlighted in the manufactured scenes and challenges the accuracy of selective memory by questioning the truth behind the images. The images, which operate like film stills, give access to private and intimate moments held within the tension of the public space. Rather than alluding to utopian dreams, these photographs portray common relational struggles with disappointment, anger, over-compensation and jealousy.
