The ocean between

Focus and research aims: This work is based on research into the emigrant journeys made by destitute girls from the Maria Rye home in Peckham to Canada in the 19th century and that of my birth mother travelling in the company of many stateless refuges in the early 1950s. It continues my focus on the articulation of broken narratives and develops the style explored in earlier work where elements of narrativity are used to create work that lies between document and affect. The video, based on location filming in Canada and constructed sequences, is projected through the panels of glass etched with fragments taken from archival texts and a sea chart relating to these 2 journeys. Each section of the video may be seen independently of the whole. The intentionality is to create open texts, which allow different interpretations to be made by the spectator. One of the aims is to create a style of visual storytelling and develop a language, which allows for a creative reinterpretation of history, memory and loss. A part of this concerns the reconfiguration of the archive, developing a creative response to primary archival sources, which encourage a non literal (literary) response to information and language.

Methods and processes: Both Video and etched glass pieces are based on research into primary sources held in archives both in Britain and Canada, these include The National Archives, London Metropolitan Archives, National Maritime Museum (UK) Nottman Photographic archive, McGill University Montreal, Universite de Laval, Quebec, Museum of Niagara on the Lake.

The Video also uses location filming in Canada and constructed sequences.

Dissemination; This was shown as part of The Voyage Out exhibition at The Dock Museum, Barrow in Furness 2003.