The doors are always closed, the string makes do for any aberrant affects of age and benevolent disrepair. Even the wide hallway has a heavy damask curtain that is drawn across the decorative arch in the centre. This closure makes the hallway into two separate room-like spaces, one light and one dark. In the dark side on a small wooden hall table in the corner beside the end door into the rear of the house, sits a plain crystal vase with dead flowers in it. The water has evaporated, leaving dark stain rings across the lower section of the vase.

There are no photographs hanging on the walls of this house or sitting in frames on mantels, sideboards or dressing tables. But there are a couple of paintings and an original print. One, a painting of flowers, hanging in the hallway diagonally opposite the dead vase of flowers, is clearly that of an amateur artist. It almost looks instructed, as though the teacher was standing beside the student as she painted. The frame is rather overstated for the skill level of the painting, but the frame signifies the authenticity of the painting of flowers in a vase—these flowers were painted from life.

I can imagine a painting of dead flowers in a vase, not dried flowers neatly arranged, but disheveled dead flowers bent and decaying with bits dropping onto the table. And the stains. Yet this painting still seems studied and self conscious especially in the hands of an amateur. Would a photograph convey this subject better? I see this painting as a discreet object, one that allows a recogniseable relation between the dead subject matter and the symbolic role of painting; in this way painting is always an artifact. Whereas a photograph of this scene may seem intractable, it is in fact the opposite. It cannot be defined, it floats as a frame amongst many, a moving picture on the decaying organic matter. I see this image changing, slowly over days, months, year. This photograph cannot be fixed.