Margaret Ambridge

We are acutely aware of the passage of time and it is this awareness that makes us uniquely human. Time constrains our life. We place boundaries, cultural norms and taboos at both ends of life; we tie them to love and faith and the inevitability of death. These life experiences emerge as tattoos on memory, indelible images painfully accumulated and for the fortunate, rebuilt as wisdom. For women our experience is compounded by expectations of beauty, motherhood, and sexuality which are indelibly tied to age.

This work is about ownership and power, and acknowledges women as present in all aspects and areas of life, that beauty and wisdom are cumulative and are built over a life time. Women demand to be seen for who they are and for their achievements, not for some arbitrary commercial or cultural projection.

The work depicts women’s life journey reflected as the passage of time on the female body. It speaks to life’s uncertainties, and simultaneously follows the literal reality of the woman’s body, from age 6 through to 90. The bodies changing shape is paralleled by an emerging strength and wisdom and a progressively defining sense of self.