The Land & Us | La Tèrre et Nous
An exhibition of newly commissioned artworks exploring our relationship to the land in Jersey
Open Friday 22 March to Sunday 5 May 2024 at ArtHouse Jersey at Capital House. 10.30am - 6pm. Closed Mondays.
The Land and Us | La Tèrre et Nous was born out of a need to reconnect and prioritise Jersey’s precious ecosystem. In the exhibition, visitors will be guided through newly commissioned artworks exploring our past, present and future habitation of the 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.
Shifting registers through the mediums of poetry, 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, we call for an urgent 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 groups such as Ocean Harvest, Youthful Minds, L'Office du Jèrriais, Cheval Roc care home, Dementia Jersey, Caesarea Quilters, Hautlieu secondary school. Highlands Art school, D'Auvergne Primary school and more!
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.
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 their 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.
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 ourneolithic ancestors through building and recreating their own dolmen.
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.
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).
