Description
OD Photo Prize 2025 | Shortlisted Artist
Zoe Montgomery [2002] is a Canadian-born artist, and recent graduate from the University of Brighton’s BA Photography Honours program, graduating with first class honours and recipient of the “Continued Excellence” award. As someone with Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) working in analog photographic media, her practice leans into concepts of intentional ‘carelessness’ in the darkroom (as disposition to inattention is medically defined under ADHD’s diagnostics criteria.) This experimental irony in her process works to recontextualize how clinical language impacts neurodivergent identities, meditating on diverse, cerebral experiences; encouraging viewers to reconsider notions of medical “truth” under a broader umbrella of psychological study.
Artist Statement | “Hide The Matches” merges lived experiences of a preadolescent diagnosis of Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) with a critique of the disorders associated medical terminology under the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual (DSM-5). The DSM-5 describes individuals with ADHD in a blanketed, childlike manner claiming them to be careless, untrustworthy, unreliable and prone to impulsivity — terms which may resonate to that of a temperamental child, but develop a deep detachment as one ages. Considering my diagnosis was the catalyst to this project’s creation as, simply, I do not identify or agree with the terminology used to label such an integral, natural part of my identity. Red appears repeatedly in the work, highlighting an associated shame with the label of ‘disorderly’ and works to emphasize a heightened experience of those emotions, and the memories associated with them. Within this project, I’ve also explored themes of heritage and the passing down of genetic traits as means of both attachment and disconnection within the scope of parental relationships. Neither my mother nor father are clinically diagnosed with ADHD, despite it being most commonly a hereditary disorder — therefore, within this leg of the project I wanted to explore my mothers perspectives on my diagnosis by making parallel our perspectives on the story of how I was diagnosed. Within the work, my mother tells the story of how I was found climbing 60-foot pine trees at the age of 6 — an external manifestation of the internal behavioural issues I displayed at the time. After receiving my diagnosis, the psychologist warned my mother that because of the unreliable and impulsive nature of ADHD (and, how it manifested in me personally) to hide the matches.
All print enquiries:
tom@opendoors.gallery
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