Artists have to write blurbs for shows. Come and see ours!
EXILE:
Jonathan Moss and Sonia Boué met by chance at Magdalen Road Studios in the Summer of 2013. Jonathan was at the end of his eight year project Are There Any People There? A creative investigation culminating in an artist’s book of haunting black and white photographs of the remains of the Rivestaltes internment camp, where Spanish refugees were held at the fall of Republican Spain. Sonia had just begun, Barcelona in a Bag, a profound investigation into a hidden family history steeped in that same Spanish conflict. This is what happened.
I had undertaken a short residency at the Magdalen Road Studios’ project space, FILAMENT 14, to develop Barcelona in a Bag when Jonathan passed by on his first day at the studios, and peered in at the growing collage of poetry, photographs and documentary writing, pasted to the walls. My grandmothers’ handbag held court in the centre of the room and seemed to take on new powers of conversation whispering messages about where to place the objects I was working with in my careful recreation of the past. The handbag, recently inherited, had opened a Proustian cache of golden memories about my childhood journeys to Spain, and yet while the project began as a joyful evocation of time, person and place, I began to learn that I had stumbled on what felt like broken glass at the deep end of the memory pool.
That very day I had added a short piece of oral testimony, newly gathered in urgent conversations with my mother about my father and grandparents’ involvement in the war – a topic silenced by the muzzle of the fascist dictator Franco, and the trauma they had gone through rendering them virtually mute on the subject. This newly pinned sheet contained but a fragment of the story, yet it’s power to shock, once absorbed, was enough to induce a proper bedridden dose of ‘flu at the close of my residency. It told first of my grandparents’ internment in France, and then of a night spent in a field to avoid a Nazi round-up of Spaniards, while living in exile in Angoulême. I hadn’t known.
Jonathan was the first person to tell me about the punishing conditions of internment, also that it was highly probable my grandparents were held at Rivesaltes in the first instance. Reeling from the synergy that brought us to this uncanny juncture we parted a little dazed – Jonathan was to return to France to pack up his home and come to live in Oxford and had only been installing his equipment in his studio space for his return after the long Summer break.
Meeting Jonathan was an important catalyst to my work, my first introduction to the powerful undercurrents involved in my quest to uncover and subsequently honour family history. I also admired his work very much. As my project progressed and Jonathan returned to the studios coincidence and confluence grew. The very next work to be shown in the project space after the Barcelona in a Bag residency were the photographs from Are There Any People There? Jonathan had also created a series of abstract painterly and video responses; while alongside my object work, my painting practice was re-emerging. We are also both research based artist, sharing a fascination with history, place and atmosphere. We talked about exhibiting together and began a series of conversations over coffee, strengthening our resolve. When the opportunity arose to make a video, Without You I Would not Exist about my father’s rescue from Le Barcarès camp in the Summer of 2014, Jonathan’s input was to prove vital in interpreting my script. Within this tribute to the Quaker who saved my father, Jonathan also skilfully cameo’d performance pieces and documented my practice. In this film I see the narrative I’m working with through Jonathan’s acute eye and gain a new perspective.
Wolfson College Gallery provides the first opportunity for a joint showing of works. https://www.facebook.com/events/438997596251351/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming
