On Saturday last week (4th april) we hosted the opening of our Fathermen ethnography-art exhibit at The Byre Theatre, St Andrews.
Here are some pictures from the opening reception.
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| 'Illustrating Intimacy' |
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| Star and his daughter |
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| Scratchie and SoSo |
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| Cleve and the twins |
a |
| audio visual installation |
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| Adom and Stella |
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| Special thanks to Xander Johnson for the photos |
The exhibit will hang until the 18th April, if you get a chance to check it out please head to the Byre, floor four. Please contribute a memory of your male kin to the conversation via the memories box.
See below for some context on the exhibit as well as a video installation that features.
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Fathermen:
an art-ethnography exhibit
Fathermen explores
fatherhood, kinship and paternal memory through a synergy of visual
ethnography and art. A collaboration between Stella Phipps, a
Glasgow-based artist and illustrator and Adom Philogene Heron, an
anthropology Ph.D. student here at St Andrews, this exhibit offers an
intimate inter-cultural conversation on the figurative presence and
absence of men in families.
This
exhibit brings together illustrations and photographs of men’s
everyday kinship lives collected during fieldwork (from 2012-14) in
Dominica, West Indies, the maternal island home of the ethnographer.
These images of fathers, uncles and grandfathers are then
re-interpreted through the paternal memories of the artist. The
ethnographic material is thus brought into dialogue with illustrative
recollections of the artist’s British father and grandfathers. By
positioning these diverse images around the exhibit
space, Fathermen seeks to present a
three-dimensional perspective on the diverse roles of men in
children’s lives.
Offering
space for reflection the exhibit will also set out an interactive
memories wall where visitors can contribute their own memories to the
conversation.
This
collaborative project extends from a guest contribution by Stella to
Adom’s research blog in a post entitled ‘Illustrating Intimacy’. Here, a conversation
around paternal proximities began. Stella’s interest in fatherhood
has since developed into her work for community arts organisation
Impact Arts [www.impactarts.co.uk]
in which she has begun coordinating father-child art workshops in
Glasgow and Edinburgh (some of this work is documented here).
