Ghosts | Forest Arts
If your memories could compost, what new growth might they feed?
Ghosts explores how, through aesthetic experience, memory and loss create strange loops in time - where the past persists within the present rather than disappearing from it. The works investigate moments of congruence between presence and absence, where what is lost continues to structure perception and space. Through fragments, echoes, and traces, this body of work approaches ‘haunting’ as a condition of memory itself. In this sense, ghosts are not figures of the past but forms of entanglement between what has been and what is.
» Undergrowth (2022) Indexical drawing (graphite, wax, magazine ink) on acid free tissue paper, 73 x 112 cm
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» Deliquesce (becoming liquid) config. 8 (2026)
National Geographic pages, heat, wax, 42x 59 cm |
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The lost thing does not vanish; it becomes structurally embedded in experience. Created in my part-time home studio in Dorset, this body of work was made in two distinct periods of time: one following the passing of my father, and another three years later. The work consists of two parts: an indexical drawing that acts as a direct physical trace of something (in this case plant matter from the garden); and the ‘palette’ (pages from a vintage National Geographic magazine) that supply the ink for the drawing. Some of the indexical drawings are produced through the transfer of the image using heated beeswax. The process partially preserves and partially erases the printed photographs, leaving behind blurred traces suspended within the wax surface. Through heat, pressure, and transfer, representation folds back into matter, forming a strange loop between image and material. The original images - once documents of distant landscapes and ecosystems - reappear as fragile residues, ghostlike presences materially embedded in another representation.
» Morning Pages - When I was 29 (2026)
Paper maché journal pages, approx 30 x 30 cm |
» Symphony (2026) Indexical drawing (National Geographic magazine, beeswax) on rice paper, 38 x 38 x 2.5 cm
» Ghosts (2026) Forest Arts, New Milton * |
When something you loved disappears, what remains entangled within you?
Attracted by concepts and methods that derive from the fragmented image, my interest lies in combining them with an instinctive brushstroke that manipulates the hierarchy of traditionally separate media (painting, engraving, collage, photography). The petrochemical residue of the National Geographic is now looped into the material and visual language of the leaf. They are not opposites; they are part of the same mesh.
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» autumn (2022) leaves, wax,
magazine ink on rice paper, 61 x 60 cm |
» deliquesce (becoming liquid) config. 6 (2026)
National Geographic pages, heat, wax, 59 x 42 cm |
* Photos of gallery space have been manipulated by Ai, in order to give a representation of the space more clearly, without furniture. All photos of work remain true to their original form.
Nina Fraser
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© COPYRIGHT Nina Fraser 2026. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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