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LOST LANGUAGES AND OTHER VOICES

24 November 2010-19 February 2011

This retrospective exhibition, curated by Anne McNeill, and funded by Arts Council England, provided the opportunity for Gregory to exhibit for the first time in the public sphere a body of recent work that investigated two key research concerns: lost languages, and journeys. Kalahari (2010), part of Gregory’s research on language and geography, is a series of seven colour photographs (4: 20”x24”; 3: 20”x16”) engaging with the relationship between the desert homeland of the San people and N|u, one of the oldest surviving human languages, known for its click consonants.

The journey series used a parallel anthropological method directed at recording the artist’s own experience of travel or temporary residence, employing a range of media. Hoy/Hobart (2008) is an experiment with animation (10 min) recalling a difficult journey from London to Hoy, in the Orkneys, that took the same amount of time as one to the other side of the world, Hobart in Tasmania. Tales of Loss (2008), a series of small drawings (13”x11.5”) depicted Gregory‘s encounters during this journey. Six Weeks (2009) consists of daily drawings on paper produced as artist-in-residence at the Kuona Trust in Nairobi; Journey to Kuona/Walk to 46 Matatu (2009) used mobile phone photographs to document a 45 minute journey in Nairobi, while Self Portraits (2010), were overlooked ‘snaps’ from 1997 negatives produced during a 6-month period working in the Caribbean and Europe. In the context of a retrospective, both sets of work became part of a broader narrative of time passing, and of the role of the archive in the present to inform the past.

Accompanying events included: Artist Talk, 24/11/2010; Archive Connections 1-day Workshop with Joy Gregory, 9/2/2011.

Reviewed: THE GUARDIAN, 4/12/2010 - Robert Clark & Skye Sherwin : http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/dec/04/art-stephen-vaughan-joy-gregory;

THE INDEPENDENT – Mathilda Battersby – 23/11/2010

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/joy-in-retrospect-lost-languages-and-other-voices-2141482.html