Questions of Home: Excavations in Film &
Fragments Lost in the Ether

Emigration does not only involve leaving behind, crossing water, living amongst strangers,
but, also, undoing the very meaning of the world and – at its most extreme – abandoning
oneself to the unreal which is the absurd … to emigrate is always to dismantle the centre
of the world, and so to move into a lost, disorientated one of fragments.
John Berger

Questions of Home: Excavations in Film & Fragments Lost in the Ether (2013) was informed by a Nirox International artist’s residency (South Africa) and a collaboration with Australian singer/songwriter Emily Barker. Questions of ‘home’ were discussed, focusing on Gaal-Holmes’ and Barker’s cross-cultural identities and family members journeys into exile. Attempts to understand their European and Antipodean family histories led them to consider personal/political histories and negotiations required for going into exile. The concept of ‘inherited loss’ opened up ideas about traumas and sentiments handed down through generations. These are not necessarily fixed or concretely observable facts but are rather evident in diffuse and fragmentary ways of being emerging through crossing cultures, geographies, languages and histories. The results of these investigations include exhibited works in experimental photography, moving image and artists’ books, and in Barker’s album ‘Dear River’. A series of photographs, taken in South Africa, sought to open up layers of history in the landscape, and were hand-printed using historic processes like Van Dyke & cyanotype printing. Hand-processed 16mm films also reveal relationships between content and materiality.

Photographs: ‘Excavations’ & ‘Fragments’ series, Van Dyke & cyanotype prints on Fabriano paper

Drawings: ‘lines of thought’ series, pigment on Waterford Saunders paper

Video: Ah! Afrika! (2013), digitally transferred 16mm, 3 min, soundtrack by Emily Barker & Dudu Nlovo.

Video: Letters (2013), video/16mm/archival film, 4.30mins, song by Emily Barker & The Red Clay Halo.

Artists’ Book: ‘Questions of Home’, edition of 3, mixed media on Waterford paper

Artists’ Book: ‘a path between two points become home’, edition of 3, ink on Waterford paper

Supported by Arts Council England, Nirox International & Aspex Gallery

L-R artists’ book (installation view); ‘excavations’ & ‘fragments’ photographs (installation view); ‘lines of thought’ drawings (installation view)