Work In Progress - Diese Ist (Mein) Opa

By Alex Kinsley Vey

Recently I’ve been invited to participate in an exhibition with the theme and title Memento Mori. The usual tropes are skulls, hair, references to time, but I decided to respond to this theme in a less direct way.

My Opa (Grandpa in German) was unfortunately a man I never got to know well while he was alive. He passed away in 2012, and suffered a stroke shortly after I was born which made it incredibly difficult for us to communicate. As I’ve gotten older I’ve regretted that we were never able to talk much.

Well after his passing I began to learn more and more about the man he was, the things he liked and disliked, and trials and tribulations both during and after the Second World War.

Memento Mori made me think of my Opa, all the black and white pictures of him in his youth, frozen in time, and how eventually that will be me, only surviving through memory and photography.

Oscar Vey, early 1990’s
*And yours truly rocking the bowl-cut*

I decided to memorialize him and create work that acts as a reminder that when we pass all that is left are pictures and memories. By taking these images of him, translating them into a solid wearable form, I hope to remember his life, and process my own eventual death.

I’ve begun by creating paper mockups glued to left over steel sheet. This allows me to play with size, see how they interact with the body when worn, and play around in Photoshop with different colours or oxides.

This series of work is still very much in progress, but I thought it would be fun to share! The next step will be to create the final etchings on steel. Decide on a framing system for the brooch findings. And to finalize how I will treat the steel once it’s been etched.