ABSTRACT
Stretton’s sustained preoccupation with the concerns of children is reflected in the recurring textual motif of the child – not least the lost, orphaned or abandoned child – across social categories and situations. Encompassing material childhood experience, her project is simultaneously caught up within a web of symbolic images which, in turn, intersect with personal, social and ideological factors. Poised between a nostalgic vision and a potentially ambitious reclamation of the child-figure, her work intervenes in a multifaceted discourse, illustrating not only the multiple otherness of the child, but also its entanglement within a wider network of difference.
