Family Silver

Anglo Indian heritage is particularly strange because its descendants have a history of rejection by both the British, and Indian communities and then being compelled to make a sudden choice at a single point in history. Families were sometimes divided by the genetic lottery of skin colour.  As a descendant of both my mothers and grandmother’s marriages to fully British men, my history is more hidden than some of my cousins. These works remind me to examine my inheritance and how I process the family culture of laying lowand not attracting attention.The reflections impose my face, distorted, into objects carried from the past…”

Matthews remembers and reexamines artifacts and memories, inviting us, who do not know the secrets each item carries, to invest them with our own. Silver is a precious metal, and these paintings are a claim on the preciousness of memory.