OLIVIA BALL

This project deals with the human condition, specifically as it relates to my nanna. It’s a personal project that follows the transition of our relationship as dementia takes hold.
Through film photography, I have focused on capturing moments, traces and a house in the clutches of entropy. I’ve documented how objects became a vehicle for communication and storytelling which often revealed a poignant absence.
The outcome is a collection of work I have made as my nanna’s health deteriorated, as her mind became more jumbled, I found it cathartic to journal, capture moments through film and talk with her about the past, an area untouched by the confusion or frustration until very recently.
At the beginning of her illness, I was renovating my house, an old house in need of restoration, as I went back and forth from my house to hers, I started to see similarities in our collections, one mess of necessity and one of a failing body. That is how the book came to be, as I rummaged through the bricks and mortar of my house, I was often struck with a poetic similarity; the old bones of my house in need of work and the old bones of my nanna, brittle and fragile, in need of care. I realised here that I was fighting two battles with entropy, but I could only win one. Most of the work in the collection comes from this stark realisation, a sense of mortality and our own fragility underlines each piece.