Invisible Hands is an art exhibition which is a collaborative project between artist Alicja Rogalska and The Morning Boat in order to showcase life as a migrant worker. The exhibition is located at Jersey Art Centre in the Berni Gallery, and aims to inform viewers of the poor conditions these migrant workers are put through and how little they gain back, in terms of pay, housing and food. This topic is highly relevant as it has been a massive part of the Island’s agriculture for over 150 years, but still is an area which has not been explored or documented.

The Agri-Care Prize was created while interviewing the migrant about their working conditions and lives. The interviews were informal as they created clay potatoes to act as a symbolic representation for all migrant workers, whilst creating this they talked about what made a star worker and made a list of criteria as to how to decide who gets the prize of the potato. This is a highly important aspect of this exhibition as it reinforces how the migrant workers are forgotten about and not talked about much, reinforcing the theme of neglect. This set of rules and background is shown below, alongside the prize potato.

As mentioned before the migrant workers were interviewed, and this was put into a video, and was projected onto the wall. Within this video we watch these migrant workers told and create their potato out of clay with the audio of the migrant workers explaining the working conditions being played on top of this. One key element of the video is that no faces are shown, allowing the migrant workers to remain anonymous allowing them to express the issues and their personal opinion, reinforcing the title of ‘Invisible Hands’

The imagery of the exhibition was all captured by the migrant workers themselves in order to accurately represent their lifestyle and working conditions. This is showcased as many images are poor quality and show poor framing techniques which makes the images authentic and allows us to truly understand the conditions that they are in. All images were enlarged and framed and displayed on the wall. After looking at some imagery one key thing that stood out was that all imagery with the subject being people, the people all seemed happy and got on with their job and life as they don’t know any better emphasising this pejorative issue within the Channel Islands.

Personally, I believe this exhibition really illustrates how bad these migrant workers get it, allowing me as a viewer truly understand their working and living conditions. The work hold strong conceptual and contextual representations which makes the imagery and overall exhibition powerful in illustrating political and social issues, suggesting our government is corrupt. The authentic and naturalistic/documentary photographs produced really emphasised how real this issue is, exposing me to the issue and feeling a sense of sympathy and makes me want to help these migrant workers. The use of imagery and media has allowed me to gain further understanding of the concept and context, which has allowed me to consider using these techniques to showcase my concept and context within my personal study.

After analyzing various artists, I have drawn a lot of inspiration from Jeff wall. I personally really like his approach to tableaux photography and his ability to capture a moment by reconstructing it in a live setting, as well as his attention to detail. I am particularly inspired by his image “Milk” due to the display of emotion that Wall has been able to capture. The idea of the erupting milk carton has inspired me to reproduce images in this style, utilizing various objects to use as a representation of a metaphor of inner emotion. The explosion of the milk carton can be seen as an explosion of inner anger and frustration. I want to portray inner emotion through the use of inanimate objects to show feelings of Occupation Vs Liberation within a person in terms of how they feel mentally.

I would like to photograph my subjects in environments where they may be experiencing these emotions, such as out partying, feeling a sense of freedom and liberty, or behind closed doors, feeling occupied by their own minds. I would plan out every element of my shoots, such as time of day, outfit of my subject and their exact body positioning and facial expression, reflective of Walls highly meticulous tableaux shoots. I therefore intend to create work inspired by Walls tableaux approach to portraiture and I would like to incorporate the themes seen in “Milk” as I find them very intriguing and a great way of portraying a story.

For my personal investigation I plan to investigated the way that myths and legends can not only be just stories but found and incorporated into our lives and surroundings of where they are suggested to be true or really just a myth and legend. I want to look into ones that specifically surround where I live on the island or where I used to travel along, having come from a fairly superstitious family I have been told the stories before and have a lot of reference made in telling and incorporating them into stories as a child. I feel that sometimes these myths and legends or stories can be a huge part of peoples lives or the identity of a place, these stories occupy peoples lives and these places which is something I would want to explore. I plan to take the photographs and explore my ideas in a tableaux way as well as incorporating photographs showing the landscapes and places of these myths and legends, I want to incorporate these stories as if they are merging in with real life. The folklore of Jersey’s legends has become common knowledge to a lot of locals and has been built into the island (eg. statues of the devil at devils hole). I want to explore this by looking into a few of the legends in detail and exploring how I can portray this with tableaux and landscape photography.

Action Plans:

• Devils Hole – Greve de Lecq
• Blinding fairies – Lavoir des dames
• Women in Black – Smugglers Inn

For my first photoshoots I plan to go out into the landscapes and see how the areas and surroundings of where these myths are suggested to be are looking and how it may effect them, I want to try and speak to some people who live around the areas for example at the Smugglers Inn pub and how they believe it or to what extent they do. I feel photographing the landscape will give me a stronger idea of a starting point for the tableaux photography and an idea of the spaces I can work with and for some outcomes will give me a sense of place and show the island in it’s natural state and compare and contrast it with the tableaux creations of maybe what the island would look like if these legends that occupy the island were real.

For my Tableaux photoshoots I plan to have people in costumes with props and other things embedded and acting in these mythical characters. I want to try and create a sense of these stories actually being true and showing them in the island. My aim is to show these myths physically occupying the island not just as they do now mentally with stories, but instead incorporating the idea and narrative of what if these stories that are told and believed to some extent true or how would they look in our everyday life now compared to when they were spread as rumours or stories that have stuck for generations being known in the island to locals and used as tools sometimes for tourism.

As another photoshoot possibility I also have a plan to take some disposable candid photographs, creating the effect of these myths being seen in real life, I would then plan to move into the studio and take object photographs of these images, suggesting a reality to the myths and stories, seeing to what extent I can push these myths to be real and believed as they occupy the island and peoples beliefs, as a sense of security or identity. To what extent do these myths and legends create an identity, culture and past of the island and its locals, creating an occupation of stories and rumours.

•