In Dreams

Grace Hendry is an artist who explores grief, connection and the fear of forgetting. Her work is process-led, exploring hands-on analogue methods. She works in partnership with organic unpredictability and subconscious urges to capture the lack of control we have over the relentless passage of time.

Although we are defined by our memories and experiences, our memories fade, warp, and corrode out of our control and conscious awareness. Our perception of current time is just as imprecise and hazy as the distant past. We conflate dreams with memories and let our brains fill in the blanks.

What makes our waking hours more ‘real’ than our sleeping ones? How can we capture and preserve what is so fleeting yet so fundamental to our sense of self?

The main visual subject matter is her mother’s childhood home and photographs that were taken for insurance purposes after a devastating fire broke out on Christmas morning 1995. The house was the anchor of the family for 60 years until it was sold a few months ago. The most comprehensive documentation of the home was the aftermath of the fire and then for the eventual sale. These photographs, evidence that the house was ‘real’, are so impersonal and empty.

The work shows the intimate crevices of the house and the viewer inspects and intrudes into it as a foreign, liminal space. She plays with familiarity and encourages the viewer to see/remember/interpret what has defined their sense of self whether it was ‘real’ or just in dreams.

The exhibition is part of the Season of Photography 2026, a celebration of photography in Scotland running from 1st September – 20th December 2026.