About

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work deals with themes relating to memory, identity and intimacy. My background as a painter
influences the creation of these photographs – all my images begin as drawings where I play with composition and lighting, and experiment with colour and props to create the mood I am looking for.

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“Deborah Hally’s photographs of children are all faceless too – and children’s faces are especially well-guarded in the age of the all-seeing camera, particularly when there is a heightened fear of predators.

However it is the children themselves who obscure the faces in these works, rather than those blurry pixels that we have become accustomed, attaching them with a level of power and agency as they seem to control our gaze. This work of Hally’s in particular has a peculiar David Lynch feel to it. Are we looking into a tiny doll’s house. Is it a dream, is it a memory? The image conveys the sense that there is something of the realm of childhood that somehow escapes us as adults and becomes frightening. The child, or the memory might just slip behind the striped circus curtain into a strange, non-linguistic world inaccessible for grown-ups.”
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Laura McLean-Ferris is an independent curator and critic, and a regular contributor to ArtReview magazine.