Grief Must be Love With Nowhere to Go

Grief Must be Love With Nowhere to Go, Textiles, risograph printed publications, seating, 2024; Installed at Bloc Projects, March - May 2024

Grief Must be Love With Nowhere to Go is a collaborative project by Chris Alton & Emily Simpson. Having each been through a significant loss in their mid-20s, Chris & Emily found the English vocabulary for communicating experiences of grief and bereavement to be lacking. They began to invite conversations about loss through workshop facilitation and art making, in the hope of finding common ground.

“Over the past 6 months we’ve been holding spaces for people to come together and share their experiences of living with loss. We’ve held shared dinners; where people are invited to bring a dish associated with the person they’ve lost. We’ve spent afternoons sewing with others; making wearable patches that communicate our grief (loosely influenced by Victorian mourning customs). We’ve invited people to sit together and share music that reminds them of the person who’s died or their broader experience of grief. With each gathering, the activity has acted as a ‘softener’ for difficult conversations, where the acts of sharing food, sewing, or listening to music create a space that words are invited to fill.”

Through a large textile installation, publication, and seating made from reclaimed materials, the exhibition brings together some of these words, transforming the gallery space into an environment for reflection. Visitors can spend time within the space, where language becomes a shelter. The hope is that by going public with what living with loss can look like, we can better support each other through the inevitable.