‘Expertly curated, No Place Like Home features the work of local and internationally acclaimed artists and invites Islanders to consider their ‘home’ on a personal, national, global and even cosmic scale. The exhibition features 23 gallery based artworks and three external installation pieces, all of which explore ‘home’ from different perspectives, including considerations around Jersey’s housing crisis and international perspectives on the health of our planet. Whilst we live in a time when this can be a complex and serious subject, the pieces on display are often playful and interactive and invite the viewer to reflect on their own interpretation and experience.’
I think this was a very interesting exhibition, consisting of visual and interactive components that created a experience of nostalgia. There was aspects of a more general idea of our home (like the earth) as well as more domestic factors. The ranges of mediums (painting, sculpture and others) made the exhibition very detailed and abstract.
A talk about the exhibition.
Curated by Rosalind Davis and Laura Hudson, No Place Like Home brings both existing and newly commissioned works by artists including Rachel Ara, George Bolster, Sasha Bowles, Justin Hibbs, Ana Cvorovic, Peter Liversidge, Lindsay Rutter, Will Romeril and Lisa Traxler.
The Exhibition
An interactive aspect of the exhibition- an old video featuring a woman cooking.Personal items featured in the exhibitionPaintings with bits of plastic going through them, created by Ana Cvorovic.The artist Harriet Mena Hill created pieces of art of slabs of concrete, creating a very visually effective piece. The detail of the apartments on the pieces of rubble made the piece feel very nostalgic, clearly holding a lot of meaning.
The Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive (SJPA) contains over 125,000 items dating from the mid-1840s to the present day. It is the Island’s principal collection of nineteenth and early twentieth-century photography and reflects a rich history generated from our geographical and cultural position between Britain and France, two nations that were prominent in developing the medium.
During the trip, the class listened to a presentation from two people in the industry about how the archives are stored and sorted. We learnt that they take archival donations of photographic materials, causing their collection to rapidly grow each day.
Due to the Elizabeth Castle project, I photographed this old map of Elizabeth Castle.
I also found this drawing of St. Helier’s hermitage, before the breakwater connecting it to the castle was built.
These pictures of Elizabeth Castle and Gorey Castle were also quite interesting, showing what the castles looked like in the past.
On their website (above) it is mentioned how ‘we hold over 15,000 portraits of named individuals, together with views of every bay, valley and vista across the Island. Our collection offers a detailed visual record of Jersey and Channel Islands history and is an excellent representation of technical and aesthetic developments throughout the photographic era.’
We visited the Société Jersiaise archives to have a look at what archival materials they had of Elizabeth Castle.
The Société Jersiaise photographic archives mission is to produce and facilitate research on the Island’s history. They achieve this by working with local and international heritage partners. The Société holds extensive bibliographic, cartographic, photographic and research collections. These collections show us our heritage and are valued by the Jersey community.
We also visited Capital House to see an exhibition called no place like home which displayed a range of artists work.
No Place Like Home exhibition
We also, visited the exhibition at Capital House called ‘No Place Like Home’ which had a range of work by various artists from all over the world on what they viewed as ‘home.’
One artists work that I was drawn to was Harriet Mena Hill Aylesbury Estate Fragments. It was made up of pieces of concrete that are from the demolished housing estate Aylesbury in South East London. She was moved by the residents stories and wanted to document them.
Chris Marker was a French writer, photographer, documentary film director multi media artist. Marker is most known for his film La Jetée, a French science fiction short film. La Jetée tells the story of the post-nuclear war experiment in time travel.
La Jetée isn’t like a stereotypical film, it consists entirely of still black and white images, the addition of sound, music and voice overs gives the film a cinematic feel. The cleaver and though out use of the still images and sounds makes the film interesting and helps the viewers connect with the storyline.
The storyline is about a man who travels in and out of time in an experiment to try and discover the fate and the solution to the problems of a post-apocalyptic world during the aftermath of WW3. The experiment results in him getting caught up in a past events that are recreated on an airport viewing pier.
The Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive was founded in January 1873 by a small number of Islanders who were interested in the history of Jersey. Included in this was a museum and a library. Their first Bulletin Annuel was issued in 1875 and continues to be the main record of our activities.
A photographic archive is a collection of photographs, often with accompanying materials in other formats, in the course of daily life, individuals and organizations create and keep information about their personal and business activities. These records, and the places they are kept, are called “archives.”Archives have been used throughout human history and they have been very helpful among historians who are studying a specific era in human history.These days, while archives still remain in use, digital archives are now very well used and are much easier and quicker to access, digital ones contain images, documents and many more things that you wouldn’t be allowed to even touch in a physical archive. Although technology is more popular nowadays, physical archives are still the most useful as they have been used for many centuries, as one of Man’s most reliable resources for information.
The Société Jersiaise focuses on Jersey history and has everything about it ranging from what the Island looked like hundreds of years ago to peoples’ registration cards during the Occupation. They achieve this through their active Sections, research collections, community outreach and collaboration with local and international heritage partners, The Société’s Sections specialise in various fields of study, from archaeology to zoology.
Ernest Baudoux, one of the photographers on the Societe Archive produced a panorama of St Helier, soon after his arrival to Jersey. The process he used to create the image is particularly interesting, the process he used required considerable skill. Producing “wet collodion” images on location required a mobile (often horse drawn) darkroom in which plates could be coated and sensitised, exposed while still wet, and developed immediately. The panorama shows the architecture of St Helier in tremendous detail. Numerous of Baudoux studio portraits were produced with a sliding plate mechanism designed to give two exposures on one glass negative.Later following by choosing the best images he often removed the ‘reject’ by marking it with a cross. Having selected his preferred image, Baudoux retouched the negative to enhance the complexion of the subject and conceal facial blemishes. This effect shows that the practice of photographic manipulation originated long before the digital age.
Chris Marker, (1921-2012) was a French filmmaker, poet, novelist, photographer, editor and multi-media artist who has been challenging moviegoers, philosophers, and himself for years with his complex queries about time, memory, and the rapid advancement of life on this planet. Marker’s La Jetée is one of the most influential, radical science-fiction films ever made, a tale of time travel. What makes the film interesting for the purposes of this discussion, is that while in editing terms it uses the language of cinema to construct its narrative effect, it is composed entirely of still images showing imagesfrom the featureless dark of the underground caverns of future Paris, to the intensely detailed views across the ruined city, and the juxtaposition of destroyed buildings with the spire of the Eiffel Tower.
What is the story behind La Jetee?
La Jetee is about a man that is sent back and forth, in and out of time in an experiment that attempts to unravel the fate and the solution to the problems of a post-apocalyptic world during the aftermath of WW3. The experiment results in him getting caught up in a never ending memories of past events which are recreated on an airport’s viewing pier. What makes the film interesting for the purposes of this discussion, is that while in editing terms it uses the language of cinema to construct its narrative effect, it is composed entirely of still images showing imagesfrom the featureless dark of the underground caverns of future Paris, to the intensely detailed views across the ruined city, and the juxtaposition of destroyed buildings with the spire of the Eiffel Tower.
Chris Marker was a French filmmaker, poet, novelist, photographer, editor and multi-media artist who has been challenging many different things including philosophers and himself, questioning time, memories and how quickly life changes. Chris Marker is best known for his film Le Jetée.
what is Le Jetée:
La Jetée is a French science fiction and was directed by Chris Marker in 1962 and was made to tell the story or a post nuclear war as well as the after math of the country and all of the damage that it caused. The film is 28 minutes long and is made of mostly still images in black and white with text as well creating a montage.
Established in 1873, Société Jersiaise is a group of islanders who set up the Jersey charity with a common passion for the islands history. The group began to grow and they started to share their interests and finds with the public, making Jersey’s history more known. Their aims were also the founding of the museum and the study of Jersey’s history as well as sharing their knowledge. 9 pier road became their permanent home in 1893 which is now looked after by Jersey Heritage along with their archives. They aim to protect Jersey’s historical aspects by buying archaeological sites in order to be able to preserve them and allow the public to visit them. The photography archive is one of their most important ones, with specific employees looking after them.
As part of out Elizabeth Castle film project we visited the Société Jersiaise photography archives in the Jersey Museum and had a talk from Patrick who is the head archivist there. He explained to us about the castle and showed us some of the images and drawing that they hold of the castle which we looked at. He also explained/showed us how to use their website which allows us to look at the archives later on in our project if we need them.
