Stories from my Kitchen Table – Exhibition hosted by St. Luke’s Radiation Oncology Network

Stories from My Kitchen Table is a poignant and visually arresting exhibition by artist and poet Liza Cauldwell. Through her powerful photographs, Cauldwell shares a deeply personal narrative of her journey undergoing treatment for breast cancer.

The images, imbued with a sense of both vulnerability and strength, beautifully reflect the delicate balance between fragility and resilience found in both nature and the human spirit.

St. Luke’s Radiation Oncology Network is hosting the exhibition at St Luke’s Hospital, Rathgar until 5 April 2025. It will then tour to the St Luke’s Beaumont site for three weeks, culminating in a final showing at the St Luke’s James’s site, commencing on 28 April.

The exhibition is co-ordinated by Ema Staunton, Arts Co-ordinator for St Luke’s Radiation Oncology Network.

Background to the exhibition
This exhibition is a collaboration between photographer and poet Liza Cauldwell, and arts consultant Gráinne Millar, with the support of St Vincent’s University Hospital.

Liza and Gráinne met while they were at different stages of their cancer diagnosis and were both treated by the inspirational medical, surgical and breast care teams of St. Vincent’s University Hospital.

They became close friends and agreed that when the time was right, they would work together to organise an exhibition of Liza’s work.

Stories from My Kitchen Table was first exhibited at St Vincent’s University Hospital from December 2024 to January 2025.

The story behind the artworks
Liza Cauldwell

‘Stories from my Kitchen Table’ is made in response to personal illness. I began making this work as a way of processing my own breast cancer diagnosis and treatment plan. I have continued photographing as I navigate a way through healing.

Within human experience and culture, the flower has come to represent symbols of emotion, tradition, and spirituality. Flowers have long provided artists with a rich and versatile visual vocabulary linking symbolism and metaphor to a narrative embedded within art history, politics and science.

From the birth of photography flowers have been present in its history. Whilst scientists both of botanica and photography have used flowers to support research, the resulting imagery could sit comfortably within varying genres from scientific exploration to art. In the 1830’s, Henry Fox Talbot used flowers as a tool to experiment and research the process of photography. Anna Atkins continued these findings with her mesmerising blue cyanotypes of plant based imagery.

Whilst previous scientists both of botanica and photography had used flowers and imagery to support research,  Atkins also sought to ‘obtain impressions of plants themselves’. Since then, flowers have continued to be a source of inspiration and exploration. There is an element of intrigue with the making of a 2d image from a natural form, such as the process of photographing flowers.

When diagnosed, my treatment commenced in the spring. It would take twelve months to complete the plan. I was advised to view each part of the treatment as a separate event within a whole process. It felt like a relay,  the baton being passed cleanly from one team member to the next. Twelve months, four seasons, a lived experience, too delicate to document, to capture the fragile feelings of illness. And yet, a moment of photographing nature, a flower, seemed to connect with the delicate strength of life, if even just for a second. There was safety in this ritual.

Throughout this parallel journey of illness, photography and healing, I have come across and reflected upon many stories shared, that seem to illustrate the delicate nature of illness, all that is seen and not seen. I am equally moved by the elegant yet raw nature of people’s narratives as they unfold.

Each still life, a flower, often wild, from my garden, my neighbours’ gardens or local area are photographed on my kitchen table, a place that is often a symbol for togetherness, a place for rituals that celebrate family and community. And yet, the table, with varying forms and function, can be a place of solitude, to sit, and reflect.

Through this experience, of photographing flowers on my kitchen table, photographer John Blakemore’s words come to mind: “One cannot photograph experience, but to have lived it can change and develop habitual ways of seeing and knowing.”

Instagram @liza.cauldwell