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ME Art Exhibition 17 Dec 2008 - 17 January 2009 'Unpredictable Patterns' by Juliet Chenery-Robson Invitation to the preview/closing event Thursday 15 January 6.00 - 8.00pm |
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University of Sunderland MA Photography Show Part II
Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art City Library and Arts Centre 'Pleasures of the Imagination' Juliet Chenery-Robson, Richard Glynn, Toby Lloyd, Claire Rousell Juliet Chenery-Robson's project 'Unpredictable Patterns' reveals a series of portraits and of details of lives lived in the shadow of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, normally known as ME. Juliet is mother and carer to a teenage daughter who has lived with ME for 4 years. Juliet's project has resulted in her being awarded an MA with Distinction by the University of Sunderland. Juliet would like to thank all ME sufferers, carers, MENE and medical experts (especially Prof Julia Newton) who very kindly contributed to the project.She would also love to hear from anyone that would be interested in contributing to the next stage of her photography based ME project - [email protected]. See below for full description by gallery curator The images present a group of individuals united by a condition rather than any usual social common denominator. Each portrait is of a single young woman in their own personal space, their bedroom, with their possessions enveloping them, but little clue as to their situation. Though all shot full-length, posed facing three-quarters, there is both a social and physiognomic diversity which acts as a ‘centrifugal’ force, requiring us to view each sitter on their own individual terms rather than focus on the series as a whole. But there is, perhaps, one commonality. The majority of the sitters have clustered objects of comfort and consolation around them, or have collected artefacts that carry connotations of childhood, and therefore the period prior to the onset of their illness. Childhood is, for many, a “place of sanctuary” in Chenery-Robson’s words: a place outside of time. The photographer’s other series of images focus upon symbolic details and are still lives, reflecting that the girls’ lives have become ‘stilled’, decelerated, and removed from the public sphere and confined to the private by their illness. Accordingly, the images are predominantly shot indoors, and concentrate upon details of the girls’ homes, or from the places of their treatment, or expand the series to include symbolic objects related to illness. A solitary glass of water, seen in front of flocked wallpaper, appears like a Morandi still life in which all is timeless, calm, as if outside of history. A Victorian phrenology head, delineating the different parts of the mind, has a cruelly ironic flavour, referring to the suspicion that the illness in question is ‘merely’ psychosomatic. In another image, a collection of butterflies, encased – trapped, even – in their individual boxes, provides a correlative for the collection of individuals represented here, each involuntarily entombed in their own rooms. Chenery-Robson intends our impressions to be contradictory, to be as lodged with problems as the medical profession’s is when dealing with her subjects. The compound idea transmitted is of lives continuing whilst suspended, spent in quiet incarceration. Here, the via contemplativa is enforced rather than willed. |