Muriel, Emissary to the Past, took shape from a number of converging figures or figments who seemed to be waiting for an assignment. There was the young Muriel Giddy who left only one trace: the image of a young girl standing next to her two infant brothers, their names inscribed on the reverse of the photograph. This Muriel died before her youngest sister Kate Muriel was born. There was that Kate Muriel Giddy who studied arts, covered books with cloth and embossing, transcribed a war diary of her brother, beat copper into trays, painted still lives, fashioned silver into jewellery and then, after the birth of her first child, my father, died young. This Kate Muriel leaves many material traces. There was Muriel Hudson-Leysen who was born before both of the other two. She was a working woman, a nurse, and she nursed Kate Muriel until her early death. Under her bed, after her own death many years later, a brown leather suitcase was found containing close to one thousand tightly packed letters, a life-time of correspondence. These three Muriel’s and their artefacts haunt my studio. Together with a manual Remington typewriter, through which they communicate, they have converged into a single Muriel.
