Natalie Bothamley

I’ve worked on the same project for a year and a half now, all stemming from experiences of my childhood. My father was an alcoholic when I was growing up, but mostly in the recovery stages. I went through every step with him, so every hospital, rehabilitation clinic and temporary accommodation, I visited him with my mother. Years later he recovered however relapsed in the first year of my degree; this marked a turning point in my work and encouraged me to create work on my father as an alcoholic. Contrary to the Richard Billingham’s series “Ray’s A Laugh” where his work is primarily about his alcoholic father; I wanted my work to be about my personal experiences and what I saw. Through my work, using a variety of different media’s like painting, printmaking, photography and text art, I aimed to show my side of the story, and how I remember it from a child’s perspective. For this exhibition I have specifically looked at the journeys I repeatedly took to the variety of places, which assisted his recovery, as I feel these journeys, are just as a significant part in re-telling my story. I re-took one of the most prominent journeys, and using photography, documented the route I would’ve taken years ago. In addition, I wrote the exact directions to some of the places, but how I remembered it and repeated over the text the amount of times I would’ve taken that particular journey, as well as making sketches of the route. I am displaying a series of books, which collectively tell part of my story.