In Production of my new film: The Seaflower Venture

Since 2017 I have been working on Entrepôt - a maritime photographic research project exploring the history of Jersey’s cod-fishing trade in Canada and its merchant networks in the West Indies, South America and Mediterranean in the 18th and 19th centuries. The project is centred around cod-merchant Charles Robin who founded the most successful Jersey firm on the Gaspé coast in 1766 and explore how, through the prism of colonial and family history, Jersey’s original wealth generated by the proceeds from the North Atlantic fisheries and maritime trade lay the foundation for the island’s future prosperity.

Several trips to colonial outposts in the maritime network has been completed, travelling over 60,000 kms across land, sea and air, researching multiple archives, collaborating with many experts (both locally and internationally) and developing a large repository of new visual and textual material. A number of outcomes, such as publications, exhibitions and a film are planned for completion in the next 3 years. Recently, I received a development grant from ArtHouse Jersey to produce a 5 minute trailer of the film, The Seaflower Venture and is currently in production collaborating with a sound designer, script editor and film editor. The film will feature footage shot in historical locations in Jersey, Canada, Brazil, Italy, Spain, Portugal and England between 2017-2023.

The narrative of the film will be created around a sea journey of a Robin ship loosely based on an actual abstract journal of a voyage recorded in a Deck Log written by sea captain Peter Briard (senior) who was employed by the Charles Robin Company and successfully mastered the Robin ships ‘Day’, ‘Oliver Blanchard’, ‘Christopher Columbus’ and ‘C.R.C.’ from Gaspé to Naples and Palermo every year for nearly twenty years between 1818 to the late 1830s. It will include a two-hander poetic dialogue between a young and old Charles Robin based on extracts from two archival documents, such as his own 18th century diary (The Early Journals of Charles Robin 1767-73 & 1787) and an unpublished biographical narrative (The Seaflower Venture) written by Phyllis Gertrude Ross aka Lady McKie held in the library at Société Jersiaise. The narration will be voiced by John Henry Falle aka The Story Beast.

Here a few film stills…

#entrepot #seaflowerventure

Entrepôt in the Bay of Biscay

When Charles Robin first sailed across the Atlantic in 1763 to seek new business opportunities in BNA (British North America) he observed Basque fishermen and women dry curing cod-fish on the shores in Newfoundland. These observations was valuable when he established his company with his brother John, first in Cape Breton and later in the Gaspé peninsula. Recent digitisation of some 230,000 documents from Charles Robin Company at Musée de la Gaspésie reveal frequent cod-trade with markets in the Bay of Biscay with Robin ships sailing annually from 1767 to 1804 and again 1814-1842 to seaports of mainly Bilbao, San Sebastian, Santander, Coruna and Vigo (occassionally also smaller ports of Santona and Ribadeo - depending on market conditions.) In the archives in Bilbao several judicial documents exists of Jersey ships with damaged cargo of cod-fish being shipwrecked on the precarious sandbank at Portugeleta before entering the estuary of Nervíon River leading into Bilbao. Iron ore was a commodity that Britain needed in large quantities to fuel the industrial revolution and in Bilbao over 200 iron mines was extracting the precious metal bringing it from open and underground pits directly via cable towers system to ships on the Nervíon River. In the last 16 days I've visited each trading post as part of my maritime project, Entrepôt and experienced the unique culture and people of North West Spain that Robin diligently learned a trade from that he was to perfect and commercialise into a prosperous business establishing merchant networks in Caribbean, South America and Mediterranean. #entrepot

Exploding Cinema at ArtHouse Jersey Capital House

Join me this weekend where I will be screening a couple of short films, Untitled and Plein-Air I-V as part of Exploding Cinema at ArtHouse Jersey Capital House. Both films were made in 1999 when I decided to walk to war in Kosovo from my studio in South England as a form of protest. During the 78 days it took to walk across Europe I made a number of spontaneous performances in the landscape in the guise of a plein-air painter. Some of these parodies were recorded and form part of INTERVENTIONS a much broader installation of video, photography and found material, first exhibited at the Danish Museum of Photographic Art in 2000.

Both films alludes to the absurdity of making art and futility of war, which in our current climate may resonate with those affected by the war in Ukraine. As Russian missiles are destroying homes and lives of innocent civilians, the irony of an Exploding Cinema is not lost on me. It starts at 6:30-9:30pm with different programmes on Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 December and promises to be a packed programme of underground short films, live music and mind-bending visuals! Featuring work from Rachel Ara, Martin Toft, Mike Davies, Lee White, Toby Norman, Dean Porter, Rebecca Coley and London upstarts and filmmakers. Book your ticket here!

Talk about Jersey's links with Transatlantic Slave Trade at Jersey Museum

If you are in town, please join me tomorrow for a talk, The Legacy of Islanders Involved in Transatlantic Slave Trade about my research and photographic work in Canada, Brazil and Belize as part of Black History Month at Jersey Museum. I will be discussing how discoveries of images and documents in various archives became starting points for Entrepôt - a maritime photographic research project exploring the history of Jersey’s cod-fishing trade in Canada and its merchant networks in the West Indies, South America, Mediterranean and Baltic in the 18th and 19th centuries. A selection of some of these archival records and photographs I made in response form part of Jersey Heritage’s Trade Roots - Jersey’s Links to Transatlantic Slavery exhibition at the Victorian House at Jersey Museum. #entrepot

Launch of ED.EM.05 Agriculture - looking back to go forward!

Éditions Emile publish regular photo-zines looking at specific subjects through the collections of the Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive. In this upcoming publication, they turn their attention to agriculture. The zine, ED.EM.05 Agriculture – looking back to go forward is made up of images by Maurice Richardson who donated his archive to the Société upon his death in 2022. The collection provides an excellent insight into all aspects of rural and agricultural life in Jersey from the 1960s through to the 1990s. 

Agriculture was a subject close to Maurice, himself a small-scale grower, and from a line of farmers stretching back over 400 years. The photographs show an industry in transition but also an awareness and desire to keep traditional practices alive. The photographs are particularly poignant considering how many farms have closed during the period Maurice was active and since. For India Hamilton, author of this issue’s article, the practices and the deep connection to the land evident in these images, can offer positions for us to begin to re-imagine Jersey’s agricultural future.

This issue will be launched during the Jersey Festival of Words on 21 September 14:00-15:00 at Jersey Library and will include a panel discussion on the past, present and future of agriculture in Jersey, chaired by India Hamilton (Co-founder SCOOP and Jersey Food Systems Lab). Deputy Kirsten Morel, (Minister for Economic Development, Tourism, Sport and Culture) will be introducing the panel discussion which will include James Godfrey (CEO Royal Jersey Agricultural & Horticultural Society), Aaron Le Couteur (Sheep Farmer and Conservation Grazier) and Kaspar Wimberley (Director and Co-founder SCOOP, The Sustainable Food Cooperative).  

This is a free event and we encourage anyone interested in this subject to attend. You can reserve a free place here. There will be an opportunity to buy a copy of ED.EM.05 and past issues at the event. Otherwise copies and a set of Limited Edition Prints can be purchased online at www.edem.je or at Société Jersiaise bookshop on 7 Pier Rd, St Helier.

INTERVENTIONS at CCA Galleries International Summer Show 2022

If you go and see the Summer Show at CCA Galleries International you will find a lot of nice pictures (mainly) of Jersey. Very little work, if any is about anything much more than surfaces and processes - which is fine, if that's what you like. My entry this year, a small screening of two video, Painting after Tragedy / Tragedy after Painting and a set of 1000 unique postcards adapted from my multi-media installation INTERVENTIONS from 1999 when I decided to walk to war in Kosovo during the Balkan conflict in old Yugoslavia. Right now we (Europeans) find ourselves at war again with Russian aggression in Ukraine and Jersey’s offshore finance industry harbouring billions of dollars and businessmen associated with Roman Abramovich. I’m sorry to spoil the garden party with such uncomfortable news. Below are a few words I wrote in a statement when the work was first exhibited at the Danish Museum of Photographic Art in 2000. Have a nice summer!

‘The installation of photography, video, sound and found objects explore the notion of communication, not only as a visual language, but communication as a set of relationships between art and life, war and peace, spectator and creator, memory and language. Thinking it as a long-distance phone call - trying to make sense of the other receiver's non-sense, replacing the phone with organic, singular activity - the installation is in effect a documentation of a man alone walking through Europe to Kosovo. The walk is not to make sense out of something seemingly senseless. French contemporary thinker, Jean-Luc Nancy, has already written that the Sense of the World has come to an end. What remain after or before the 'event' are marks of human subjectivity. We are always already too late for any event, even if we might see it or even experience it. It is impossible to overcome distance by speaking, by writing or by making art. What is left are fragments; visual souvenirs captured like postcards that are too late, recorded after or before the event. Postcards, that do not inform us about an essence, but a mere existence.’

IDENTITY & COMMUNITY newspaper published today!

Featured in the Jersey Evening Post today is our 52-pages IDENTITY & COMMUNITY newspaper featuring images produced from a variety of projects over a two-year academic programme of study by my A-Level photography students at Hautlieu School.

As part of the research and contextual studies students were asked to engage with some of the key questions raised by the Government of Jersey’s Island Identity project and explore through their own photographic studies how they interpret and identify distinctive qualities of island life. What can we learn from looking at a set of photographs produced by young islanders? At first sight they show us a seemingly random set of images of places, people and objects - some familiar, others surprising. For example, a fish stuffed in a plastic bottle may ask us to consider more closely our marine environment, commercial fishing or food consumption. As a combined sequence of images they represent different views that in many ways comment on a wider discussion on some of the primary objectives explored in the Island Identity project, such as ‘how we see ourselves’ and ‘how others see us.’

The newspaper was kindly sponsored by Deputy Carolyn Labey, Minister for International Development and Assistant Chief Minister who in her foreword shares her personal thoughts on what makes Jersey special to her in context of the Island Identity project led by her department. She said, ‘Identity involves searching our soul, engaging with difficult issues, and asking not only who we are, but how others see us and what a vision for the future might look like. The perspective of students and young people in this debate is critical. Identity is a broad and far-reaching concept, one unique to all of us. This collection of images recognises both our differences and our commonalties. These times may be uncertain, but in my view the topic – ‘what Jersey means to you’ – is a fundamentally optimistic and forward-looking one.’

At Hautlieu we have a long tradition of collaborating with external agencies and professional individuals and are indebted for the time and inspiration provided by the following people; Lucy Layton, outreach curator at Jersey Heritage, Stuart Fell, architect and building historian, Patrick Cahill, photo-archivist at Société Jersiaise, Shannon O’Donnell digitisation and outreach co-ordinator at Société Jersiaise, Francesco Vincenti & Claudia Runcio, creators of 2 Lives NFT exhibition, Yulia Makeyeva, artist and founder of Connect With Art and Liam Nunn, animator and founder of MILK Creative Studios.

INTERVENTIONS - A Walk to War

As we are watching in disgust and despair the invasion of Ukraine by Putin’s barbaric regime we are reminded of the last war in Europe. In 1999 when the conflict in the Balkan came to an apogee with Milosevic' ethnic cleansing of Kosovo and the bombing by NATO forces I decided to walk to war as a form of protest. At the time I was living in Hampshire (UK) and described INTERVENTIONS as 'a performance of a man walking alone through Europe to Kosovo.'

'The idiosyncratic performance during 78 days across the European landscape is an inquiry into distance - the journey itself. It is the existence of the journey, and not the essence of the destination. Kosovo is not the subject of my work but a mere stop to my journey. My position is akin to that of a passer-by constantly trying to situate himself in a moving environment. Each intervention is another fragment of the story that is being invented and a challenge to the narrative and economic structure of Western representation. A movement through images and the memory of them experienced in a non-chronological, non-linear way. The installation of photography, video, sound and found objects explore the notion of communication, not only as a visual language, but communication as a set of relationships between art and life, war and peace, spectator and creator, memory and language. Thinking it as a long-distance phone call - trying to make sense of the other receiver's non-sense, replacing the phone with organic, singular activity - the installation is in effect a documentation of a man alone walking through Europe to Kosovo. The walk is not to make sense out of something seemingly senseless. French contemporary thinker, Jean-Luc Nancy, has already written that the Sense of the World has come to an end.’

INTERVENTIONS was first exhibited at Platformen, Museet for Fotokunst 4 March – 24 April 2000, Denmark and later in a major survey exhibition, Street Photography 1917-2017 - A Tribute to Everyday Life, Øksnehallen, Copenhagen 28 June – 1 August 2017.

Watch a short video here of the exhibition in 2000 and a selection of installation images from 2017.