Salon Bijou

Salon Bijou is a multi-disciplinary project exploring family, memory and nostalgia using letters and belongings of my deceased Nan. Through photography, drawing, printmaking and installation I have explored how scale, composition and repetition can evoke different ideas, memories or feelings. 

Some of the objects in my project belonged to my Nan - items of jewellery, letters, her tarot cards, a fan. Others are things I have collected over the years that remind me of her: multi-coloured glass paperweights; Shalimar perfume; Jackie Collins’ Hollywood Wives - or are replicas of things she used to have such as the box of curlers and hair pins that I used to play with as a child. 
The title of the project, Salon Bijou, comes from the name of the hair salon my Nan owned in the 1950s/60s in Herne Bay, Kent. I was brought up mostly by my Nan and my childhood was full of stories about the salon, recounted by her and various family members. I only found out in recent years that it was called Salon Bijou. The salon has an almost mythical, magical status in my mind, a place full of memories that have been handed down to me and that have somehow also become mine.