Breathe: Portraits by Christopher Ireland

5 September - 4 October

Christopher Ireland’s exhibition, simply titled Breathe, presents photographic portraits of women whose partners have died from asbestos related diseases. Breathe is dedicated to those widows united by loss, and to their men who have gone. Theirs is a story about strength, resilience and the will to breathe.

In the dread that it engenders, in the pain and suffering it brings to so many families, in arrested dreams, in the sheer contemplation of what may lie ahead, the cruel legacy of asbestos knocks many breathless. The qualities of light, composition and pathos achieved in these outstanding photographs reflect the tragic social consequences.

Image: Christopher Ireland, Dorothy, 2009, pigment print on archival art paper