Ray Harris, “Ghostly Others”
7 May – 30 May
“Ghostly Others uses the ghost as a symbol for the lingering residue left by unresolved haunting longing, grief, nostalgia, yearning, exclusion and memory. Emerging from 1930’s Jungian M.Esther Harding’s term The ghostly lover an impossible idealised fantasy lover that holds our completeness or sense of self in an illusion of perfection outside ourselves. A longing for something that does not exist.
This theory extends in Ghostly Others to countless narratives of ‘normalcy’ and the idyllic we are exposed to throughout our lives or aim endlessly to achieve, of equally perfectly devoted ghostly mothers and fathers, selves, gender, sexuality, race, life purpose, happiness and immortality. These idealised narratives create others out of many of us, those of us with disabilities and illness; physical and mental, severed relationships, trauma, difference, loneliness and disconnection.”