Fathermen Exhibit @ The Byre, St Andrews 4th-18th April

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.

'Illustrating Intimacy'

 

Star and his daughter

Scratchie and SoSo

Cleve and the twins

a

audio visual installation 

Adom and Stella

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).