Margaret Sharrow's Degree Show: 'Numinous Family' opens 23 May at Aberystwyth University School of Art

Margaret Sharrow, Numinous Family (Joe), mixed media, 2009 

Margaret Sharrow is a mixed media artist specialising in historic and alternative photographic processes. Her work attempts to represent the non-physical or spiritual aspects of existence within the two-dimensional plane. 

During the past year she has explored a variety of means of producing photographic images, usually employing light sensitive chemicals brushed onto paper exposed in the sun. 

All these processes have come into play for her degree show project, Numinous Family, a series of 'soul portraits'. The images evoke the mid nineteenth-century era of daguerreotypes, with glass portraits presented in luxurious gold framed cases. However, while evoking that distant past, the installation references more recent photographic techniques, such as the Kodak Box Brownie snapshots of the 1920s and the fading colour prints of the 1970s. 

The subject matter of these images is a selection of people and places in Margaret's circle, sometimes but not necessarily earthly family members.

-Catalogue statement, Aberystwyth University School of Art Degree Show 2009