My son the documentarist Tim Hetherington was targeted and killed by Gaddafi forces in Libya 2011

I have recently completed a B.A. Fine Art degree at Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University.    

In 2012 I enrolled at Manchester School Of Art to read Fine Art.  This personal journey enabled by wonderful, sensitive, dedicated tutors and supportive peers who connected me to the universal journey and the life of great artists and mankind.

Through a variety of visual languages I found a way to express the great experiential themes and questions of life in vibrant, transformative works of art which were exhibited at the Manchester School of Art, in the summer 2018. My work won a national Aon Community Art Award and is currently being exhibited in the Leadenhall Building in the City of London.

My work throughout the course has been about myself and Tim. This was not choice, it was compulsion.  My brush, my hands sought to express my feelings. Was it Tim’s way of keeping me going; was I compelled to reach others; find some positive way of creating something good out of such a traumatic loss? Loss of Tim, loss of a child, to me, cannot be accepted, got through, around, “moved on”, closed or healed.  It’s a permanent wound and each seeks to find a path to keep upright, keep walking. 

Tim’s presence is with me through every step of life. He guides me, his goodness, his being seeps through me and lives on in me and in what I try to do. Truly he brings a new meaning to Wordsworth’s line “the Child is the Father of the Man”

For some reason in 2018, my final year, I was compelled to jump off the page and make 3D work around the intimate self.  It’s hard to pinpoint a reason - was this because I had spent much of the year liaising with and inducting Tim’s work and belongings into the Imperial War Museums in UK?  Was it the finality, the letting go of Tim’s very personal possessions such as his beloved cameras, his poignant, meager case of clothing & possessions that had returned, unaccompanied from Libya? 

Or was it the universal call of all mothers – how did this happen, can such horror be prevented or assuaged? 

I just don’t know. But I must keep trying.

What I do know is that I feel the urge to connect with the universality of the great wound of death and loss. It’s a permanent fixture in my life. Death of a child can never be forgotten, soothed, sanitised, swept under the carpet. I thought of all the other mothers forever heavy hearts .  I especially connected with my paternal great grandmother, losing her son, Joseph Gillett. No 25640 at Ypres, Belgium, in the 1st World War ,the father my father he  never knew; and all mothers of the earth, losing their children.

I wanted to express all our suffering, to support our pain, but most of all I wanted to alleviate or wherever possible,  prevent such suffering. I would like others to feel and be compassionate towards our loss. Compassion breeds empathy, empathy breeds love, breadth & depth.  It seems the first step. 

Does it have to be like this?     

Change starts with me.

I want my art to be a conduit, social sculptures which promote both personal & universal discussion and asks such questions as “why are we still sending our children to war? “  What can each of us do to stop what Siegfried Sassoon called   the “world’s worst wound” – war?   Or any  wound?

 When will we address the loss of children through mental turmoil? Are we doing enough to support the sciences and research into the prevention and amelioration of deaths of children?

Can I start in a personal way? Can I connect with you through my work?   Will my social sculptures open up discussion? Is it transformative?  Can you talk about loss to someone?  Can you talk about loss to someone today?

Can you talk to me about Tim?

It’s a noble, honourable thing to do.

Each of us is a grain of sand, but also land. Here is my contribution. Please let me know your reactions, views  at

info@timhetheringtontrust.org

JUDITH HETHERINGTON

Images: My work explores and documents the materiality of loss, ineffable presence and conflict on multiple levels.  These images, the deconstruction and construction of every piece of Tim’s  Cannon EOS 5D camera are set in a political landscape of documents and over 200 photograms.