The Land & Us | La Tèrre et Nous

 Friday 22 March to Sunday 5 May 2024 at ArtHouse Jersey at Capital House

An exhibition of newly commissioned artworks exploring our relationship to the land in Jersey. 

Produced by ArtHouse Jersey and co-curated with Alexander Mourant and featuring the work of five artists and community collaborations.

Preview opening to take place at 5.30pm on Thursday 21 March. All welcome.

ArtHouse Jersey is delighted to announce their latest exhibition The Land and Us |  La Tèrre et Nous which will open at ArtHouse Jersey at Capital House on Friday 22 March 2024. In this show local and UK artists are responding to a call for us all to reconnect, prioritise and protect Jersey’s precious natural ecosystem. 

Visitors will be guided through newly commissioned artworks exploring Jersey’s past, present and future habitation of the local land. Travelling from our ancient neolithic past, when the land was a sacred site of ritual, through our farming traditions, oral histories and earthly language of Jèrriais, to our woodlands, indigenous species and pathways that encircle the Island, The Land and Us is a place to gather and reflect on the natural world. 

The project was developed by ArtHouse Jersey in collaboration with local artist Alexander Mourant, and partner artists, Hannah Fletcher, Remi Graves, Alice Burnhope and Sam Carvosso. Each artist was commissioned to create new artworks, often in direct collaboration with the community. The exhibition is a culmination of a year-long community learning programme that took place at ArtHouse Jersey and community centres across the Island, working with diverse members of the community across all generations.

Featuring photography, sculpture, textile, drawing and installation, The Land and Us offers a myriad of approaches to further our collective, sensory understanding of the natural world, and strives to deepen our appreciation of its interconnected forms of knowledge. In an age when the climate emergency threatens the natural world, the exhibition explores the urgent call for transformation of human to nonhuman relationships, to empower and rethink our collective responsibility through knowledge-transfer, empathy and art. 

Local participating groups included writers, poets and artists, land and sea foraging community groups, schools and charities including Youthful Minds (Mind Jersey), EyeCan, L'Office du Jèrriais, Cheval Roc care home, Dementia Jersey, Caesarea Quilters, Hautlieu school. Highlands Art school, D'Auvergne primary school, Ocean Harvest and more!

During the exhibition Paul Journeaux we will be facilitating storywalks with primary schools and families over the Easter period at Capital House, as well as visits to local care homes.. Amanda Bond will also be running forest therapy sessions out in nature. All sessions are aimed at reconnecting you with nature.

THE LAND & US ARTISTS AND ARTWORKS

ALICE BURNHOPE

Alice Burnhope is an award-winning textile artist and educator. Specialising in socially-engaged artwork, Alice collaborates with the public to co-create immersive installations, sculpture and wearable art, fostering their wellbeing and deepening their connection to nature. 

Stone upon Stone is a large soft interactive sculpture made in collaboration with a diversity of six community groups where Alice ran natural dye and embroidery workshops onto waste fabrics with opportunities for people to come together and learn new skills. The final colours and forms are inspired by Alice’s passion and observations of Jersey’s geology and the many dolmens across the island that she visited. 

Stone upon Stone is interactive and invites people to go back 6000 years and become our neolithic ancestors through building and recreating their own dolmen. 

SAM CARVOSSO

Sam Carvosso is an artist working across sculpture, drawing, video, and installation with a research-led focus. Informed by trips to National Parks, nature reserves and forests, his practice considers the creation and perception of landscape, with a particular interest in wild spaces. 

His artwork Jersey Coastal Path is a reflection of his time spent in the landscape during a five day residency and hike observing, listening, recording, writing and making temporary artworks in the landscape such as sundials. You can follow his journey in a pathway installation throughout the gallery with a series of sculptures developed from his observations. This includes moss and plaster sculptures where he worked with Highlands Arts School to cast directly from nature and a sun-dial influenced by a temporal artwork created with Youthful Minds. (Mind Jersey).

HANNAH FLETCHER

Hannah Fletcher is an artist primarily working with photographic materials, matter and methods. She is the founder of Sustainable Darkroom, a not-for-profit dedicated to creating a more ecological future for photography. For The Land & Us |  La Tèrre et Nous Hannah worked with Hautlieu school students and local land and sea foragers and growers to gather and create work from Jersey’s land. A Moment Of Gathering, is an installation tablecloth and sound piece which looks into Jersey’s cultural usages and relationship with Vraic to consider wider dynamics between sea, land, farming and foraging on the Island. You are invited to sit at the table to study local specimens and to listen and engage in the dialogue around the table. 

REMI GRAVES

Remi Graves is a London based poet and drummer. A former Barbican Young Poet, their work has been featured on BBC Radio 4, at St Paul's Cathedral and in various anthologies. Remi’s debut pamphlet with your chest was published in 2022 by fourteen poems.

Remi’s commissioned poem, a well worn path, was inspired both by her walks in Jersey and the change in seasons, both weather wise and socio-politically. A well worn path charts both the beauty of our natural world whilst not oblivious to the harshness, grief and violence also present there. 

For The Land & Us |  La Tèrre et Nous Remi’s workshops centred around a shared experience of a walk in Greve de Lecq woods led by creative exercises that leant on sensory experiences, memories, and an invitation to listen to one's surroundings. Thanks to the various languages in the room and openness of participants, the exhibition features two collaborative multilingual poems in English, Jerriais, Tagalog and Zulu as well as a collection of individual poems featured within a book. 

ALEXANDER MOURANT 

Alexander Mourant is a Jersey born artist, educator, curator and writer based in London. He is a Lecturer in Photography at Kingston University. His practice and research centres on photography, writing, performance and sculpture, with a particular interest in the legacies of agriculture, Land Art and Arte Povera.

Alexander ran an experimental sensory drawing workshop with EYECAN which culminated in a large collaborative collage on display within the exhibition. The artist then developed a new touch artwork, A Tree Draws, where segments of the collaborative collage were etched into wood from a tree felled in Jersey due to natural causes. You are invited to touch and feel the sounds, memories and journeys of nature. 

For the exhibition, Alexander has created a new sculpture, An Image That Holds Its Heat. The artwork abstracts an original photograph depicting the effects of the weather upon a tomato crop (September, 1963), courtesy of the Jersey Evening Post Collection at Jersey Archive. This ghostly structure takes the form of a Victorian cloche used for protecting and growing vegetables, and questions the legacy and future of farming in Jersey. 

Alexander Mourant, Lead Artist & Curator, said: "Working on the learning programme and exhibition for The Land and Us has been a joy and privilege. ArtHouse Jersey is one of the most supportive and caring arts organisations I've ever worked with. They prioritise and nurture communities, genuine engagement, connections and artistic excellence. I'm proud to see the culmination of all the hard work from the commissioned artists and community groups, as they reflect on our relationship with the natural world." 

ArtHouse Jersey Community Producer, Karen Le Roy Harris, said: “This is an incredibly special project and exhibition, with many layers of depth. The Land & Us offers Jersey’s public an opportunity to see the result of five newly commissioned artworks responding to Jersey’s landscape. Each artist was selected for their commitment and work within community and education, sharing their passion and skill through a series of workshops from natural pigment dyeing to casting directly from nature itself. In essence we looked to bring the community together to explore our collective relationship to nature. The exhibition is a celebration of work created together with Islanders from varying walks of life, with knowledge sharing and collaboration at its core. The project explores the need for social and environmental change that is born from both working together and with nature, offering visitors a fascinating, artistic insight into all of these themes." 

The Land and Us |  La Tèrre et Nous runs from Friday 22 March to Sunday 5 May 2024 10.30am - 6pm (closed Mondays) at ArtHouse Jersey at Capital House. There will be a preview evening taking place at 5.30pm to 7pm on Thursday 21 March 2024. 

All are welcome.