Arctic Hare Press
Arctic Hare Press
Uncle Allan had a significant quarrel with his mother who never spoke to him thereafter and cut him out of any inheritance. Apart from his being a painter and textile designer that was really all I knew about my father’s Uncle Allan until by chance I saw that the National Portrait Gallery had a photograph of him in their collection. This photograph was the first of many fragmented clues leading to a quest to unlock the aura of mystery surrounding this man. This work begins as a simple search for a relative who was rarely spoken about but as it progresses encompasses an examination of what it means to be part of a family and how enduring family ties really are.
This assignment requires me to assume the roles of detective, archivist, photographer and writer. The body of work - archival photographs and documents combined with text and my own photographs taken during this search - documents the process of the search as well as exploring family secrets and how secrets kept in the past impact on the present. How stories retold in a different time bring with them an entirely new narrative from that of the time and place of their original context. There is consideration too of secrets themselves, how they fester and ferment below the surface but ultimately refuse to stay buried and the part that mute objects, photographs in particular but documents too, play in their unmasking that suggests that somehow these have a momentum of their own.
This work to date was a response to a specific brief and is presented as a single copy hand bound artist’s book covered with original fabric produced in 1934 by Allan Walton Textiles. However the project is ongoing.
Laissez Faire 16 Pointing and shooting at Photography by Jon Madge