forget-me-not forget-me-not exhibition – Paula Barker/Nicole Porter
It is unusual for an entire exhibition to consist of a single pixel, used repetitively, to create multiple artworks. It’s a technique requiring patience, precision and passion. In the forget-me-not exhibition this is precisely what Paula Barker, the artist, does. She takes the beautiful five lobed forget-me-not flowers, in pink or blue, with bright yellow centres, and uses this motif as the single, smallest, visual element to create artworks that are subtly soft in texture, tone and meaning.
Thousands of forget-me-not flower motifs are meticulously placed to create shapes and figures symbolising separation and loss.  Separation and loss are not the usual qualities one associates with forget-me-not flowers – generally they linked to faithfulness and enduring love. In Paula’s visual statements they mirror the landscape of her own life, a life shadowed by adoption.
Paula was removed from her mother at birth and lay in limbo waiting to be adopted. A highly traumatic experience of separation and loss for both mother and child.  Adoption at its source is an unnatural act leaving enduring emotional scars on the mother and child (one could also include father’s in this scenario but this exhibition is about Paula and her mother).
Nicole, like many other adoptees, does grapple with her own identity. This is not surprising when she was stripped of her name, family and heritage at birth and through the stroke of a legal pen given a new name and family. The implicit assumption, or expectation, that her original roots could be instantly forgotten, or abandoned, or have no further impact on her life, is simply not true.
In this forget-me-not exhibition we have Nicole Porter remember, rather than forget, what it was like to be, however fleetingly, her first self, Paula Barker, and through the tiny visual motif of a delicate and fragile flower, depict the loss of her birthright and of her mother. Keep in mind Paula and Nicole are one and the same person.
The artworks are arranged in pairs and each pair reflects a missing element to depict separation and loss. One of the strengths of this exhibition is the fact that all of us, whether we are affected by adoption or not, will be able to relate to the symbols of loss or separation as we all, at sometime, may have lost a parent, a friend, or even a beloved pet, and therefore recognise close emotional attachment and intimate connection as inescapably human.
Whatever the cards we are dealt with at the beginning of our lives we do have a responsibility to live our lives to our best potential including finding ways to heal, and find peace with ourselves and our circumstances. The pathways chosen are likely to be many and varied with art one of the best forms of redemptive therapy. I therefore commend Nicole for her reflection, courage and through her art regaining some possession of her early life.  In remembering Paula, Nicole is freed; with the best of her life to come.

Thomas Graham