Vanessa Brassey Our Love was Light (he said) (2025) Messengers Bring Me Versions of The Past, He said/She said, 2023-5 

Exhibited for the first time at Shapeshifters, this series explores how the past, though fixed, is accessible only as a version of itself — filtered through memory, emotion, and time. Inflected by the perspective of the rememberer, and reshaped by that same person at different stages of life, these works invite viewers to reflect on what really happened, and how the past is continuously remade through recollection and retelling.

Here, the past unfolds in a hot seascape of collective memory — shimmering, unstable, and always slightly out of reach.

Oil and media on plyboard

18 cm by 13cm