Afloat
2024-2025
Exhibiting in Gallery of the Giants in Aldbourne where I grew up and along the Kennet Avon canal where I now live, has become part of my healing process. By sharing publicly, I hope to encourage conversations and feedback on the sensitive context of my work…
"How does the imagery resonate with you personally?"
" Can sharing stories of grief and loss help in healing?"
"How do you feel about publicly sharing sensitive personal stories?"
Please leave an anonymous response here
Project Statement: Afloat
“Time stretches differently here within the gentle melody of living afloat. I have found a different way to live since you left. Within the harshness and beauty of nature, I’ve found understanding, healing and love. This is who I have become and I want to share my story with you”. (Iles 2025)
The legacy of trauma from the tragic ending of our family’s love story became mine. Normality was suspended and post-traumatic stress dominated. I turned to photographic and moving image practices to help heal and mitigate disintegration of self.
In 2021, leaving the family home with all its ghosts I swapped land for water to live on a narrowboat. Travelling at walking pace, immersed in nature a transient nomadic way of being has unfolded.
“My hard but simple life you would have embraced and loved. This has become my ‘lifeboat’ in the chasm of your absence”.
At 50 I’m now a decade younger than when she died. As my hair fades to grey like her ashes, I recognise her in myself and reflect on each other's love and the unbreakable strands that connect us. As I become a woman she will never know the landscape and seasons change, she travels with me.
“Winter will forever mark the anniversary of your death”
Through Afloat in a series of images accompanied by a short film using my father's voice as my own, I engage in an imagined conversation with her.
