return

Prema Arts Centre March 29 – May 10 1998

a site – generated exhibition referencing the personal and community memory of the death of my child, Davin. Situated in a former chapel, this work celebrated ‘continuum’ and honoured the process of grieving.

return is a glimpse,
the movement is cyclic,
nature completes itself

I remember…holding your hand through town as you said “hello” to strangers / “that was a nice lady” / taking off your wellies to go in the bank because there was carpet on the floor / red wellies with yellow tops / the ones you loved / the ones you died in / finding onions in my shoes / wondering / where you were / with little May-May / on the path / between our home & hers / where we and the wind / scattered your ashes / I remember / your little arms around my neck / the feel of your cheek pressed against mine …and how you loved the daffodils

Throughout return, Prema received in the region of 2,000+ visitors to the work. The processes and outcomes of this exhibition were extraordinary, I received countless correspondences from people touched by the work.

“This work is beautiful, spare, delicate, thorough & stylish; it has an emotional kick that has left me rattled for the last two weeks” Folake Shoga

Media coverage included local press, HTV & a double page feature by Simon Hattenstone for The Guardian

Acknowledgements:

with thanks to Prema:
Mark Crowe, Nic Dadswell,
Joanna Montgomery, Gordon Scott,

Marijatta Bryan for her inspired writing and archive of memories

Mac Dunlop, my sons – Tiriel, Jiva & Sam,
Eddie Chambers, Andrew Dewdney, Colin Evans,
Phil Goodall, Jools Green, Sophie Howard, Martin Lister, Steve Moles, Anthea Nicholson, Folake Shoga, Gilly Rogers.

The exhibition ‘return’ & the catalogue ‘afterimages’ were supported by:

The J.A. Clark Charitable Trust, The Langtree Trust, Rolls Royce plc. & The Haffendon Moulding Co. Ltd, Photobition Ltd

for further information see PDF(s):

return (2.5MB)

exhibition documentation and report by Gordon Scott – director, Prema Arts Centre

‘Love letters to my dead child’ (421KB)

Feature article for The Guardian April 29th 1998
by Simon Hattenstone

‘return’ Focal issue 3 (2.0MB)

Image / text centre page spread for Focal – a magazine produced by Stroud Valleys Artspace

return reviews (647KB)

Artist Newsletter (Julian Warren), Venue Magazine
(Folake Shoga) & local newspapers

Return Evaluation Report (72KB)

MA.thesis: Negotiated practice- InSites May 2000

beyond control

the communal planting of 750 daffodil bulbs in memory of Davin, (one of his last wishes was to pick the daffodils).

A blaze of yellow welcomed both visitors and Spring to the garden of the converted cotswold chapel that is Prema Arts Centre. I had spent the previous day with my father visiting the graves in a remote village in the Mendip Hills, south of Bristol. We had passed time enjoying the small clumps of daffodils which marked out the regular spaces of graves. At Prema, 750 daffodils, planted by the artist and her friends the previous autumn, blossomed impressively at nose height to the children that played amongst them. But for all that, Annie Lovejoy’s work, entitled Beyond Control, makes for an uneasy spring idyll; there is something uncanny about the scale of the piece. Julian Warren (a-n magazine review)

thanks to everyone that helped plant:
Mark Crowe, Mac Dunlop, Jools Green, Tony & Julie Greenstreet, Phil Goodhall, Helen Leach, Tiriel, Jiva & Sam Lovejoy, Liz Milner, Steve Moles, Lis & Dave Parker, Helen & Cloe Stear.

spade

a spade dug into a mound of earth in the entrance way, contains a small video monitor displaying time-lapsed frames of the daffodil planting.

“One of the most arresting pieces of work in the exhibition was an old metal spade – itself a potent symbol of fertility, of growth, of life, almost as much as being the gravedigger’s tool of choice. A small rectangular hole had been cut into the spade and a tiny video monitor, no more than a few inches wide, had been inserted into the created void. The piece was beautiful, poignant and quite quite arresting.” Eddie Chambers

“The piece is entrancing – I can’t help wandering back to check their progress. The work is typical of the way Lovejoy marries nature and technology.” Simon Hattenstone

peephole (‘hotwater bottle’, peephole, lightbox & slide)

this ‘title piece’ is experienced intimately and yet distantly….through a peephole

‘peephole’ (‘hotwater bottle’, peephole, lightbox & slide)

“We’re looking through a peephole at a distorted photograph ….and suddenly a little boy’s face comes into focus. If you turn away for a second and look back it has turned into a teddy bear again. The image is clever, beautiful, haunting. Why does she hate the picture of Davin? “Because he’s wearing the clothes he died in” Simon Hattenstone

until starting to work on this exhibition this was the only photo left of Davin…a horrific reminder of his violent death.

A few years after his death, in the early stages of grieving, it became important to transform this image. I was fortunate at the time, to have an opportunity to experiment freely with a colour photocopier (courtesy of Canon). This process
resulted in a comforting & symbolic image of re-memberance.

Davin had been wanting new trousers for teddy, he never got to see them, we made them anyway

to hold teddy
is to be held
in the
comfort
of memory

comfort

one of a series of ‘hotwater bottles’ formed by the roots of wheat grass containing magnifying lenses

it’s fifteen years later
your gran just sent a photo of you
I’ve never seen it before
you’re looking through the gate
out to the field
to the path
to the road
that was to take you away

The ‘hotwater bottles’ were present on a sofa of soil, on closer inspection they contained images & texts

Visible through moving water ..like looking through tears at distant memories…a consideration of things fluid…

to cry, to imagine, to hold, lose, feel, know… not know.

The sofa with its messages in hot water bottles was particularly wonderful to me – the necessity to kneel and be close to the soil that “grows” over the chair and to make a real effort to look
inside, beneath, below. Shirley Brown

its voyeuristic, tactile & moving beyond words
Simon Hattenstone

blind

This photograph from an earlier work tough (installation:Watershed, Bristol 1990)
was reproduced on opaque film for a window blind.

burgeoning & blind.. to what lies ahead, the unknown territories of motherhood

candle
(aluminium, video monitor, text in wax, flickering candle bulbs)

situated on the stairway to the upstairs space candle references the frequency of car accidents. A small monitor embedded in an acetate image of the ‘hotwater bottle’ displays a candle constantly being relit. Above this is a rectangle of hardened candle wax inscribed with the text:

an average of 10 people a day die in road accidents

the wax is backlit by flickering candle bulbs & the whole piece is framed within a square metre of alluminium offset from the wall.

source:
Europe, Statistics & Research Directorate
UK Road Accident Statistics for 1996
3,598 died
48,071 died or seriously injured
320,302 all severities

….and how you loved the daffodils

looped video projection

On entering this beautiful vaulted space a light opaque screen displays a field of daffodils, the image spils over to form a circle around the window through which the planted work beyond control is visible in the garden below.

Standing next to this overlooking window one becomes sandwiched in a space between prescence & absence, the continually repeating insistance of the digitally preserved imagery echoing the fragile, (literally, soon to be) absenting flowers below. The video installation will remain long after the daffodils have died; a presence moulded from absence, a forever returning sublimated trace that is testiment to their death. Julian Warren

The daffs move & sway in the wind sometimes gently, sometimes franticly. A tension develops as the sound oscillates between busy traffic, sirens.. and idyllic moments filled with birdsong.

The image is gentle & life affirming, but the noise is disconcerting. We’re waiting for the screech of an accident which never comes. Simon Hattenstone

When outside looking at the gallery, and when inside, looking out through the windows of the gallery, the visitor was introduced to ways in which the artist revealed pathways through metaphor, to connect with the uniqueness & complexity of life. The gallery became part of the exhibition, rather than it’s limits. Gill Goddard – Methods of Engagement (excerpt from MA thesis)

return is a glimpse, the movement is cyclic, nature completes itself

afterimages

The exhibition was accompanied by a full colour catalogue of selected works produced between 1993 – 1998 (afterimages InSites Publishing ISBN 0 9532755 0 7) with text by Martin Lister UWE Bristol.

The motivation for this production was to provide a record of the work that I had been doing since leaving the area, an acknowledgement of Davins role as catalyst into my arts practice…a form of completion.

I am particularly grateful to Martin Lister for the text which discusses process-led methodologies and problematics of archiving… and to Eddie Chambers for his invaluable advice re. editorial & production.

Catalogue design: Annie Lovejoy
incuding images by: Jim Howden
Alan Russell (Zed Photography)
AirFotos Ltd.

Printed by Manor Printing Services (Wotton) Ltd.

for further information see PDF(s):

catalogue text – Martin Lister (336KB)

‘afterimages’ a re-presentation of selected works by Annie Lovejoy 1993-8 InSites Publishing ISBN 0 9532755 0 7