Tina Rowe's work explores ways of applying meaning to vernacular portraits through the use of domestic objects as substrates.
By printing of what are essentially discarded images of people who would have been known to the photographer on to domestic and natural objects she encourages the viewer to consider the changing ways that families and friends have been represented history. In printing her own portraits, the work addresses contact in a time when it has become problematic or dangerous even with our closest relatives.
The objects she prints negatives on are objects that would have shifted in their own meaning through their lifespan. She uses this familiarity to encourage us to consider how these items connect with our own lives. The ceramics are always from what were once famous and now extinct factories, each piece would once have been part of an extensive set that had been a signifier of the social status of the owner.
Rowe is a self-taught lens-based artist and founding member of e5process collective which runs and experimental darkroom in London. In 2019 she won the Denis Roussel Award for her work Oyster Shell Ghosts.