GOODBYE, STRANGERS

From a rounded death tally to a numerical age of the deceased, narratives of death are often told in mass media via numbers and statistics. Numbers have the power to render a person’s life into numbing factuality and objectivity, compressing unfathomable quantities into compact digits that are perhaps more manageable for the human eye. However, as we become so used to seeing human mortality as numbers, do we risk forgetting the individuality and uniqueness of each person’s life?

Goodbye, Strangers showcases drawings and mixed-media artworks by Rebecca Grant, who is interested in visualising the complexity of the human lifespan through mark-making. Grant’s creative practice is labour intensive and meticulous, ritualising the act of grieving and documenting lives. Her artworks encourage viewers to reflect on how we approach and communicate an often tabooed topic—life and death. They further invite the audience to extend empathy to strangers who once were what we are.

This exhibition takes place in the pandemic age where loss and grief have become a shared experience amongst many. Such a context provides an additional perspective to the discussion of mortality and what it means to be alive.

Rebecca Grant

Grant is a graduate of Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, with a BA (Hons) in Contemporary Art Practice, and Newcastle University in 2017, with an MA in Art Museum and Gallery Studies. She is a practising artist who has exhibited in many national exhibitions, most notably in 2017 as a New Contemporary at the Royal Scottish Academy and the Society of Scottish Artists. Grant’s creative practice involves a variety of media but primarily focuses on mark-making. Drawing upon her own experience of loss as well as gathering opinions and stories from others, her work explores ways of measuring the human lifespan. 

Her work encapsulates not just how we approach death and grief but also how we communicate that to one another. Discussing our shared experiences with death, she investigates why we fear it, why we shy away from it, and why it is often considered a taboo subject. By counting the days of an individual’s life, her work illustrates the passing of time and shows how the different days contribute to the building of a life. Grant’s artworks are labour intensive, meticulous and an almost ritualistic process—a process giving validity to the people they represent.

Christie Chan and Rory Williams 陳雍希

Venue: The Moving Gallery, The Athenaeum, 27 Fawcett St, Sunderland, SR1 1RE

Exhibition dates: 3 December 2021 – 9 January 2022        

Opening times: Friday–Sunday 2pm-5pm (Closed on 24-26 Dec and 31 Dec-2 Jan); Thursdays by appointment only

The exhibition venue was generously provided by Breeze Creatives.