A PLACE CALLED HOME

A PLACE CALLED HOME is an autobiography of sorts. A self-portrait constructed from the places that have shaped both my childhood and adult life. Filtered through the narrative of my own experiences, it melds the two locations, neither of which feels like home, into a fictional landscape.  This constructed space allows me to navigate the tension between past and present, familiarity and estrangement, and to search for a sense of belonging. In my attempt to document the landscape in which I dwell I have also revealed the beliefs, motivations, prejudices and, dare I say, obsessions which have driven me to make these photographs. Many of these traits have only become known to me from looking at these images together over many years. It is clear from these images that I am preoccupied with things that are lost, broken or abandoned. Many of the objects I photograph were once mobile but now sit inert. Some could be described as no longer suitable for purpose, others as forlorn. A PLACE CALLED HOME is the landscape in which I grew up, in which I live. It’s messy, it’s worn, it’s been trampled and it’s beautiful.

However, within this fictional space there exists a stronger narrative; one that is recognised as a reality in post-industrial communities throughout the UK. Conceived as an intervention into personal feelings of detachment, the work has developed into an autoethnographic exploration of deindustrialisation and precarity. Within both landscapes there exists a spectre. A past that haunts the land and those who dwell there. The deindustrialisation of the North in the latter half of the 20th century devastated communities both socially and economically, destroying the livelihoods of working class families and inflicting a precarious existence on the generations that followed. The project is informed by the notion of 'social haunting' through the work of Professor Avery Gordon, of the University of California and Dr Geoff Bright, at Manchester Metropolitan University.

In July & August 2019 A PLACE CALLED HOME was exhibited in Tübingen, Germany - one of several events celebrating 50 years of partnership between Durham and Tübingen.