Page 2 - Voyages of deire catalogue P D F

VOYAGESOFDESIRE
I have been using the figure of Jane Franklin as a catalyst for my work, a kind of framework for the projection
of my desires, for a number of years. There have been five exhibitions so far, in which the work has circled the narrative of her life in Tasmania and the circumstances of her leaving.
I have exhibited in the temple she built for the people of Tasmania and I have slept in the house in which she was born.
I have read her journals and the letters she wrote in search of her lost husband and I have dreamt of the same unknown landscapes that she too dreamt of.
My residency at Cambridge University came about partly because of this fascination. It is the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge which holds a lot of the original documents, letters, journals, newspaper clippings, drawings, maps, paintings etc relating to Jane’s search for John Franklin, and it was the SPRI who offered me the position of artist in residence over the English summer of 2008.
I remember the town of Derry in Northern Ireland (or Londonderry from the British/Unionist point of view), a
place where you can still feel the presence of a civil war that ended only a few years ago. There are still remains of the observation towers and the barbed wire along the famous Derry wall and the windows of pubs like Downey’s Bar are completely blocked off from the street; from the prying eyes of British soldiers.
It was in Derry that we came face to face with the Bogside murals; pictures made up of pain and defiance, seemingly painted with blood. They were the most powerful artworks I saw in the UK, outside of the Elgin marbles. People are calling for their removal now as the meaning of the murals begins to change over time; they are now seen to romanticise what was in fact a brutal and merciless struggle. In England every stone you move reveals a scar, in Derry the wound is still raw.
In London you see history and narrative laying one on top of the other A city that has been lost and won burnt