Fiona Bowring, Mrs Geitz's chairs (CREATIVE 2022)

Mrs Geitz was a neighbour I never met. She was a friend of the lady who looked after my children. By special arrangement, and because Mrs Geitz could no longer manage her steps, my son dropped her newspaper up to her doorstep in the morning, and my daughter delivered her mail in the afternoon. Often she favoured Mrs Geitz with a little chat. Soon after Mrs Geitz died, I noticed the front door open. Concerned, I went round to investigate. Her daughter was there, waiting for an appraiser to come and look at her furniture. Long story short(er), I bought the kitchen set, walking the chairs home one by one, on my head. One chair, from Mrs Geitz’s the bedroom, was pristine with its red vinyl and white piping. The others had their seats covered in a tapestry fabric popular at the time. This is how they look, some 25 years on. In making this self-portrait at home, I reflected on the challenge of minute variations in the cycle of day-to-day life. At the same time, I celebrate the joy of solid, dependable, simple and colourful things in daily use, of stories, and of happenstance.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.