Like ex-lovers, Mary Teague’s found images, empty plastic photo-mount frames, holiday snapshots, and temporal sculptures all leave marks upon one another. Mute expressions of raw sentiment, they vainly attempt to communicate their content; materials and signs referring ceaselessly, demanding our participation. The tragedy, of course, is that thanks to the crudeness of our means of expression, we cannot speak with these objects and join their voices with ours.

Indeed, Teague’s work points to the inadequacy of our words and our visual semantics: our emotions – particularly negative emotions – are deflated into bathos and mawkishness when transcribed into a common language. Shocked into silence by the realisation, we are unable to abandon the limitations of our
languages and must proceed as we have always done - though now burdened with resignation.