My work is an investigation of my experience of the familiar and unfamiliar in relation to uncanny feelings of nostalgia. The nostalgic yearning for the past, often in an idealized form, can be triggered by an object or event acting as a reminder. This longing to go back to a particular time can result in emotions varying from happiness to sorrow. It is this exact process that I experience when I look through a collection of old photographs taken by my grandfather, before I was born, of Italy and Venice. These images are fascinating, they have been taken with affection in a documentary style and show signs of their age with a dated brown tint. When I look at these photographs I am instantly transported back to my grandmother’s house where I would unconsciously dwell in the protection of childhood unaware of the hazardous outside world. This is a strange relationship to have with these photographs as I have no connection to when they were taken in the late seventies. I am aware of the familiar becoming unfamiliar being revealed through these unconscious, child-like feelings. I wish for a similar act to happen to the viewer, for these romantic, old photographs to provoke memories or a sense of longing.John Stezaker’s photo collages of uncanny dream-like spaces and juxtaposed portraits produces the sense of a romantic atmosphere mixed with an odd, uncomfortable parallel and it is this type of contrasting relationship that I am exploring in my work. This relationship is formed using photographic illusion, which is where two photographic sources are combined or the composition of a photograph is used to create a completely different feeling or reading from the original scene. Using this idea of the photographic illusion I have collaged my grandfather’s photographs with my own to create a sense of familiar/ unfamiliar.The second element of my collages consists of my own photographic material documenting the language of landscape. The language of landscape defines the atmosphere a landscape generates and how that particular space translates to the viewer. The reading or language of a landscape can be entirely transformed with a simple alteration. To do this I have used the idea of placement of object combined with the distortion created by reflections. I have made a mirrored cube which I have placed in contrasting surroundings; an abandoned, dilapidated factory (industrial), a domestic space and a natural environment. The black and white photographs I have taken reveal how this object affects its environment and how the landscape affects the object. Due to its mirrored surface the cube appears to be camouflaging itself into its surroundings. As it reflects and repeats the information around it our perceptions of that environment change. Somehow it has made an unwelcoming area (the deserted factory) softer and mysterious. When placed in a domestic environment the cube becomes cleaner, sharper and more graphic. Patterns appear and a familiar setting becomes alien and indecisive. The mirrored surface gives the domestic environment an illusion of space. Merging these two contrasting elements creates a new and strange image of an unusual and unexpected territory.I have used these collages as source material for my paintings. I have done this mainly for scale, but also so I can incorporate the qualities of paint and the process of painting in the transaction. I have used a flat, matt, graphic style of painting for the background of my pieces and contrasted it with a loosely painted, glossy, colourful image for the centre. This allows the middle image to be pushed forward and gives the sense of a collage by having two separate elements. I have chosen a large scale for my paintings as I want the viewer to be enveloped in these contrasting images. I have created my own world of confusion, and displayed it in an archival way. It is a documentation and collection of images whose purpose is to connect with the unconscious.The ideas behind this project have very much been influenced by my reading and understandings of Freudian theory. Other texts I have looked at are; On Longing; Narratives of the miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the collection by Susan Stewart, Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes and The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing by James Elkins. Artists that have influenced my studio practice are John Virtue with his expressive use of black and white, Paul Morrison for his patterned, overbearing landscapes, William Sasnal’s application of paint and Christian Boltanski presentation of the collection.