Artist in Residence – The Canterbury Journey

I have been in my studio beginning to experiment with ideas that have begun to form in response to my initial research in the archives.

Since I began working with archives the on constant experience is that the archives can only ever offer a starting point. The information they contain, if taken in isolation is incomplete and easily misunderstood. Digging deeper can sometimes bring clarity and confirmation but very often looking beyond and outside the archive is the only way to actually get the whole story.

To get a clearer picture I have found I have to look beyond what is in the archive. It is very easy to get tunnel vision, to get so hooked on looking at what the archive is presenting you with that it becomes easy to make assumptions. It is also easy to accept that what the archive is telling you is correct. This experience has been an underlying theme to my work for many years. Often deliberately using a piece of information gleaned from an archive in a misleading context.

Researching at the Canterbury Cathedral archives is no different and it is comforting to have found evidence that suggests that I am not the only one to find that but also that sometimes if you just look closely enough the answers are right there under your nose.

Cat no U88/A7/35 contains photographs of young men who attended St Augustine’s College who served during WW1. Most of the men are depicted wearing their military uniforms and nearly all the photographs are marked in some way with their names. It is always a happy discovery; finding photographs of named people as it at least offers the possibility of searching further afield for more information about them. On the other hand, finding unidentified photographs means that further research might be difficult.

One photograph in particular, or to be clearer, what was written on the back of it, caught my attention when I first looked through them.

These altered notes, identifying the man as Jasper Phillimore and then deciding no it’s not him and making the decision to mark the photo finally as ‘un id’ connected with my ongoing thoughts about nameless people in photographs and how this links to acts of Remembrance. see my blog post ‘Fracturing of Identity’ 

The result has been the beginnings of an artists book entitled ‘I am not Jasper Phillimore’. The concertina book contains a series of screenprinted images and when opened fully is deliberately confusing.

I hope to have the book printed and available to view at the upcoming Cathedral Open Day on Sept 20th when I will be on site discussing my residency so far.

I have been trying out a different approach to researching in the archives. Rather than spending my time reading and studying at the Cathedral I have been photographing the items and then reading and studying them at home and in my studio. This approach gives me more time to consider and think, to be able to print items out and pin them up, to be able to have them around me, and I have found this more productive. Productive not necessarily in making work but more in assimilating information, finding connections and developing thought patterns and ideas.

This also means that blogging about my research has taken a back seat as I try to get to grips with the enormity of information that the Cathedral archives offer.

So this blog post is a very short one; to share this:

the shocking realisation after constant looking at this photograph

that this young man

very tidily tucked up in bed

and looking so directly out at us

has

no

legs!

Following on from my visit to the archives last week I have been spending time in my studio looking through the Admissions and Discharge Book for Dane John VAD Hospital. The book records 101 wounded men from 1916 -1918 and a further 16 on a separate piece of paper found slipped into the back of the book.

Given that the hospital had 115 beds and operated from 1914 – 1919 it is safe to assume that this book is just one of many and perhaps the only one to survive. Interestingly it records only the names of soldiers serving with the Australian Forces, whilst a loose piece of paper at the back records the names of men from both British and Australian Forces. Again, only an assumption, but it seems that different nations forces were recorded in separate books.

This book relates to the photographs I wrote about here, in that they are both from the Dane John Hosp and it was with an element of excitement that I had the notion that the book might make it possible to identify some of the men in the photos. The sad reality is that this was not possible and so I now have faces without names and a list of 117 names without faces.

How do we remember someone we never knew? How do we remember a person who we know what they look like but don’t know their name? How do we remember a name without a face? Remembrance seems to focus primarily on those who lost their lives with this statement about Remembrance on the Royal British Legion website

The Legion is the national custodian of Remembrance, safeguarding the memory of those who fought and died in conflict.

And although the sale of the Poppy raises funds to support the living I wonder how many people on Remembrance day, particularly during these centenary years of WW1 do just that, remember the living.

Remembrance Day was not conceived until the end of WW1, it was conceived to remember those who lost their lives, as a communal act of mourning, taking place in subsequent years around war memorials listing those who had died.

I would really like to hear any thoughts those who read this may have about Remembrance.

These thoughts bring me back to my research in the archives.

The men in the photos and listed in the book may well be men who survived and it is my feeling that both their anonymity and their survival equates to a form of forgetting. There is no way of searching for their names in the archive, no way of a descendant ‘finding’ them. I seem to have taken on the task of trying to find out more about the men listed, with my research now taking me to the Australian Governments Army Records. It’s a long slow process.

This fracturing of identity has led to the first ideas for a body of work with a working title Remember Me.

Remember Me – both a question and an instruction. The initial work an attempt to express ideas around the act of Remembrance and my initial responses to the experience of my research.

There are a few more ‘finds’ from the archive that I want to write about before I share images of the work I am making. As with most of my work it is becoming multilayered with cross-overs to other projects and ongoing work from my own family archives but I hope that in writing and sharing the research before showing the work it may help to explain it all. Or maybe not.

All images by permission of Canterbury Cathedral Archives.

Cat no CC/W26/A/7

Very few hospital records exist from WW1 and so I was rather excited to discover that the Canterbury Cathedral archives hold the Dane John VAD Hospital Admissions and Discharge Book.

This rather lovely book, printed and probably bound by Burrup, Mathieson and Sprague Ltd, London. Another interest of mine is letterpress and the history of the print industry and who knows if that little piece of information might be interesting or useful at some future date.

The book holds the name, rank, regt no, age, injuries, date of transfer and other hospitals transferred from/to, of the men who were cared for at Dane John VAD Hospital from 1916 – 1918.

As an object it holds so much grief and anxiety contained within the neatly written entries, each one brief and to the point. No place for emotions.

I found I could not read it within the Cathedral’s Reading Room for fear of tears falling onto it and so I have photographed each page to read at home, in private, as I feel befits what this object represents.

I will write more about it once I have ‘opened’ it’s pages.

Ideas for work are beginning to form, but I am not rushing it. I have faith in my own process of working and know i have to do the research first. The ideas will then begin to arrive – probably at 2am!

Catalogue reference CC/W26/A/7

All images by permission of Canterbury Cathedral Archive

Over the last two visits to the Archives I have been accessing several files that relate to the Dane John V A D Hospital. The hospital at Dane John House (now known as Chantry Hall) was used as a Voluntary Aid Detachment Hospital with 115 beds from 1914 – 1919.

There are 3 photos showing patients and nursing staff in what looks like a small room. There are two beds visible in the images but difficult to tell if there are more out of shot. The photographs were taken by J G Charlton of 24 Mercery Lane, Canterbury but give no further detail.

There are several clues in the images – the chrysanthemum’s in the vases and the ghostly outline of a bare tree through the window, that might indicate that the photos were taken October/November time.

Other details in the photos show charts hanging behind the patient in bed

There is an embroidered emblem on the bed cover that I think says KVAD probably referring to Kent VAD – who did the embroidery?

A number of personal items on the bedside cabinet – a bottle of ink and what looks like a letter – who was it from/to?

Watches with unreadable times

An emblem on the men’s jackets saying VAD K70

All details revealed in close up shots of detailed sections of the originals. Hi res scans would no doubt reveal more but I am not sure this would be possible but is on my list of questions to find out

And of course the people in the photos. Staring at us from out of the two dimensional boundaries of the image. Their gaze direct and unfaltering, alive across the span of 100 years.  An anonymous gaze. Their current anonymity an uncomfortable reality. They are currently just a number in an archive, a number that identifies a series of photos. Further research may rectify this but it is a long shot.

All images with kind permission of Canterbury Cathedral Archives

CCA-CC/W26/E/1-3