Swimmers II

a summer's bay

the girl

one breath

a dive into a ripple of light

following the boy down a plunge of thought

stay close - move like me - don't collide

a dance a curl

fluent in water

now blue now green

faster and faster

bait ball bubble ring

gilled and finned

a roll a flow a wave a wake

punk fish glitter ball

all curve and dip and lift and kick

now corralled

un-spiralling

shipwrecked here

the flippered princess and her frog-footed boy

Re-worked

Re-worked, at Jersey Arts Centre until 4 February, is an exhibition of original work made in less than 36 hours from materials that have been found, have already been used in another context or are naturally occurring in the countryside.  The artists are Carl Danby, Paul Talbot, Claire Rondel and Kirsten Miller working with Ruth Baier-Rolls.

Shadows of Light - Carl Danby

ghosting through was particularly taken with Carl Danby's light installation, casting shadows on the gallery wall,

Shadows of Light - Carl Danby

and the exquisite wedding dress by Kirsten Miller with Ruth Baier-Rolls ( I might even call it a 'ghost of a wedding dress', following on from my recent Great Expectations post!)

Wedding Dress - Kirsten Miller + Ruth Baier-Rolls

The transparent pockets are filled with shells, leaves, petals and other natural treasures.

Wedding Dress - Kirsten Miller + Ruth Baier-Rolls

All the pieces exhibited are imaginative, giving a twist and a new dimension to everyday materials.

Another Earth

I saw over 50 screened films last year (festivals, film societies etc) and one of my favourites was indie Another Earth.

A perfect duplicate of the Earth appears in the sky on the day that MIT student Rhoda (Brit Marling) crashes her car killing a family, save for music professor John Burroughs (William Mapother).

On her release from prison, Rhoda inveigles her way into the home of  the grieving Burroughs, as a competition is launched for a prize ticket on the first trip to Earth 2.

As Rhoda quietly tries to work out some kind of redemption, the second Earth hovers above as a ghostly doppleganger, suggesting the possibility of paths not taken, of shadow lives.

The imagery is beautiful and never overstated.  It's one of those films that leaves a resonance with you for days and longer...

Archisle # 1

Archisle # 1, the first exhibition created by the Jersey Contemporary Photography Programme, hosted by the Société Jersiaise, features images responding to the theme of islandness by 21 International and Jersey photographers.

It is 'an experimental project.  Its method is to test the result of forming a lens based compound out of two main constituents: the concept of the photographic archive and contemporary expressions of 'island experiences'...

...Islands of fact and of fiction have surfaced in the submissions... islands of the earth and islands of the mind.'  

(from Archisle #1: An Introduction - by Gareth Syvret with contributions from Mark Le Ruez.)

There are some beautiful images in the exhibition.  From a ghosting through perspective, I am especially drawn to Cynthia O'Dell's Migrations: Legacies of the Irish Famine and a Family Record of Amnesia:

Cynthia O'Dell Migrations 

By transferring images from family archives and historical sources to transparencies and placing them in the landscape, by overlaying the past onto the present, her images are haunting and they evoke how personal history and the history of a place can intertwine and resonate in the present through memory and nostalgia, leaving echoes and traces. 

Her narrative is one of migration and dislocation:

'As a child, my family's narrative revolved around dislocation: lost homes, both owned and rented, and disrupted family dynamics, all layered over with a nostalgic longing for vague notions of Irish heritage.'

'By symbolically taking my ancestors back to their native country I attempt to complete the circle of their migration pattern...  I am trying to re-create my own family album in an impossible scenario and as a result I am inventing a new narrative.'

(Cynthia O'Dell, from Artist's Statement.)

http://www.archisle.org.je/