The Red Nightie

About

The work is a playful, non-sentimental exploration of mourning through a specific motif, a red night-dress. Anne and her mother, Dorothy - with whom she lived and for whom she cared full time until recently - each had a set of identical, albeit differently sized, stretchy red night dresses. There was only one clean nightie left in the house the morning after Dorothy died in May. The clean nightie belonged to the artist - a smaller size than her mum's - and it was into this nightie that the nurses gently squeezed her mother after she died. Anne's nightie remained on Dorothy when her body was taken away and she was cremated in it. Although Anne’s gift of the nightie was unplanned, over these recent summer months of art and mourning, it has come to stand for the part of the artist which went with her mum at her passing as expressed in this tender and comical exhibition.