No Place Like Home
Wednesday 6 September to Sunday 15 October 2023
Curated by Rosalind Davis and Laura Hudson.
At ArtHouse Jersey at Capital House + unexpected locations around the Island
Capital House, 8 Church St., St. Helier, Jersey, Channel Islands, UK.
Tuesday to Sunday 10:30am - 6pm. Closed Monday
ONLINE TALK Friday 13 October 6.30-8.30pm. Book here!
There are also a series of Audio Interviews with artists Justin Hibbs, Alan McFeteridge, Lisa Traxler and Peter Liversidge to accompany Justin Hibbs piece ‘For the Attention of the Homeowner’ on Soundcloud here.
There is a programme of talks and events throughout the show. See more here
ArtHouse Jersey presents No Place Like Home, an ambitious multi-disciplinary exhibition that reaches beyond the gallery to locations around Jersey. For this exhibition twenty-three artists build a rich narrative that delves into personal stories, global issues, childhood memories, and speculative worlds as well as the bleak realities of the current housing market to look at a broader concept of home and what it might mean today.
Home may be a sanctuary or a place of danger, it might be stable or temporary, intimate or shared, rooted for generations or a refuge in times of need. Home might be a person, place or planet, a community to which we belong or contested land no longer available to us. We may all yearn for a Home, but homes are full of histories, meanings and tensions; charged with political, social and economic realities they are subject to both external forces and internal dramas. ‘Home’ means something important and different to each one of us.
For this exhibition ArtHouse Jersey has commissioned new work by Ana Čvorović (Bosnia/UK), Sasha Bowles (UK), Justin Hibbs (UK), Will Romeril (Jersey), Lindsay Rutter (Jersey) and Lisa Traxler (Isle of Wight/UK).
Alongside the commissions the curators have selected existing work by artists who resonate with the broad ranging themes of No Place Like Home including: Jananne al-Ani (Iraq/UK), Rachel Ara (Jersey), Jackie Berridge (UK), George Bolster (Ire/USA), Peter Jones (UK), Daria Koltsova (Ukraine/UK), Peter Liversidge (UK), Harriet Mena Hill (UK), Kate Murdoch (UK), Ravelle Pillay (South Africa), Saba Qizilbash (Pakistan/UAE), Martha Rostler (USA), Judith Tucker (UK), Joanna Whittle (UK), Eddie Wong (Malaysia/NZ) and Andrea V Wright (UK).
No Place Like Home also extends beyond the gallery to include Luke Jerram’s Floating Earth, an ode to the precious planet we live on and the fragility of water sited at Queen’s Valley Reservoir, (14-24 September), Rachel Ara’s Dissent Module, an otherworldly happening that leaves its debris by the roadside and in our minds, and a new iteration of Lisa Traxler’s sculpture Ghost Echo, sited at the entrance to Jersey War Tunnels that draws upon occupation history, bunker structures and early warning radar systems.
Within the gallery exhibition at Capital House, Justin Hibbs’ For the Attention of the Homeowner takes the form of a living room in which visitors are invited to assume a temporary residence in a space curated by the artist. For the Attention of the Homeowner reflects upon ideas of possession and memory and, as homeowners, visitors can open mail, play records, read books and curate their own 'shelfies'.
No Place Like Home builds a rich narrative that delves into personal stories, global issues, childhood memories, and speculative worlds as well as the bleak realities of the current housing market to look at a broader concept of home and what it might mean to each of us today.
More info:
Sasha Bowles presents her site specific installation Home Is Not A Place, mischievously reworking photographic imagery of grand homes blended with personal history to create a fragile façade barely held together to evoke feelings of temporality and displacement.
Displacement is a core theme in Ana Čvorović’s work in her installation The Earth Was Beginning to Lose its Balance, floating worlds offer respite to small glass vessels filled with childrens swimsuits, tiny mattresses provide a softlanding and everything hangs in the balance.
For his commission Space as a Premium, sculptor and silversmith, Will Romeril tackles the realities of the housing crisis, purchasing silver to the value of the average cost for the minimum space rentable by law and transforming the raw silver into a tiny replica of a ubiquitous flat. A miniature abode that only something the size of an insect could occupy. In an ongoing act of defiance and preservation Harriet Mena Hill salvages clumps of concrete from a social housing demolition site in London, refacing and painting the concrete with vestiges of the lives that have been moved on from their precious homes. The precarity of home is visible in the work of ceramicist Lindsay Rutter who presses into soft clay the details of her struggle to pay the rent in today's cost of living crisis, wrapped like a blanket around a standard form and then fired to stress point- something's got to give.
Justin Hibbs’ For the Attention of the Homeowner takes the form of a living room in which visitors are invited to assume a temporary residence and, as homeowners, open mail, play records, read books and curate their own 'shelfies' within the artist's curated space. Referencing her public sculpture Lisa Traxler has created an interactive 3 dimensional puzzle for the gallery that visitors can piece back together in a multitude of forms. Ukrainian artist Daria Koltsova impacts the very fabric of the gallery by taping the windows with intricate patterns, this is not only a symbolic gesture but a fact of war where glass needs to be protected from bomb blast. Issues of loss and family histories are dealt with by three artists working in very different ways; Eddie Wong uses speculative images generated by computer software to paint a portrait of his lost grandfather, who likely died at the hands of the British colonial forces in the Malayan jungle, leaving neither an image or body. Saba Qizilbash scours records of the 1905 earthquake in which her grandmother was temporarily lost as a child and painstakingly draws with a pencil, adding a small white tent as a symbol of hope and protection amidst the devastated scene. South African painter Ravelle Pillay uses lithography to document ancestral homes on both sides of her family that are imbued with histories of colonialism and the complex individual stories that shape them. In an ongoing series Judith Tucker presents a number of paintings depicting dwellings built on land as part of the Plotland Movement, self-built settlements that were established on poor land in the south-east of England from the late 1800s and up to the Second World War.
Joanna Whittle explores themes of ungroundedness and loss; her seductively detailed and miniature paintings draw the viewer into an uneasy, unpeopled world of shifting perspectives and hidden activities. Home isn't always a place of safety and security. For some ‘home’ can be a site of trauma and fear, In Soft Target, Andrea V Wright creates a bodily shield, its decorative appearance could blend into a domestic setting that belies its real intention as a barrier against harm. Drawing on her background as a family aid worker Kate Murdoch covers the mouths of china figurines with band aids, drawing attention to the suppressed voices of women and girls, while Peter Jones draws on the traumas of childhood with carefully painted images of childrens toys, worn and abandoned these remnants remind us of the imaginary worlds we create as children to kept us safe in a hostile world. Martha Rosler’s seminal video piece Semiotics of the Kitchen is a hilarious critique of the commodified domestic role played by women in the home, dating back to 1975 Rosler’s performance piece, which sadly still resonates today. Rachel Ara also uses humour in her response to the chronic housing crisis, in a series of images recording her struggle to fit into a makeshift house unsuitably small for her body. Ambiguities of scale are important in the work of Jananne Al-Ani whose film Excavators focuses on a colony of ants in the desert, part of a larger body of work The Aesthetics of Disappearance: A Land Without People, which explores the disappearance of the body in contested and highly charged landscapes. During the 2020 lockdown
Ana Čvorović used Google Earth and movies to locate landscapes which she painted on brightly coloured tarpaulin, unanchored from reality these Archipelago appear to float like islands. The shadow between reality and fiction lies at the heart of George Bolster’s work, with his panoramic Jacquard tapestry We Are Neither Above Nor Apart from Nature, questions the future of humanity and the existence of other worlds while Jackie Berridge creates a complex imaginary world where all kinds of creatures are able to find refuge in her tapestry like painting Float Me to Distant Lands.
During the exhibitions many events were planned; Curators talk, artist talks, a discussion with Jersey’s housing minister, a Soundclash curated by Justin HIbbs involving locval and national dj’s, as well as organised group visits from schools, Dementia Jersey, Eyecan and Autism Jersey.
Website:www.arthousejersey.je Insta:@Arthousejersey
More info and artist biogs here and press and install images below.
About ArtHouse Jersey
ArtHouse Jersey is a charitable arts organisation that serves the Island community and wider audiences by supporting artists from Jersey and across the world to create and present ambitious work. ArtHouse Jersey manages studios, provides residency opportunities, offers development grants and provides spaces for developing new work. ArtHouse Jersey runs an exhibition space at Capital House in St. Helier and two salons for live events and pop up shows at their HQ, Greve de Lecq Barracks, as well as working with schools and local communities to deliver education and outreach programmes throughout the year.
Install images courtesy of David X Green
Press image created by Rachel Ara and Laura Hudson.
Install Images by David X Green.