So Cheerio for Now

  • 11th November - 16th December
  • Stephen Lawrence Gallery

FROM 11 NOVEMBER 

‘So Cheerio for Now’ features video and photographic works by Sally Waterman and Jacqueline Butler. Both artists use their personal archives as a source material, reflecting on familial relationships, love, and mourning.

Drawing on analogue photographic albums and hand written letters, each artist reconstructs fragmented narratives from their past. Having moved away from their family homeland as young women, the exhibition traces the recurring journeys they make to their ancestral homes in the Isle of Wight and Glasgow.

Reflecting upon travelling a geographical distance in order to reach their childhood homeland, the works permeate an opening for contemplation within this timeless space. Removed from the familiar routines of their everyday adult lives, each meditates on family history and the meaning of home.

Waterman’s three videos, ‘So Cheerio for Now’, ‘Keep Smiling’ and ‘February’ consider generational differences in communication, focussing on the inscribed personality evoked in the handwritten. Her experience of leaving home and the loss of her Grandmother, together with a family friend, are recalled through the writings of Sylvia Plath and Derek Jarman.

In her work  ‘After Dusk: Mourning Bouquets’, Butler appraises family photography’s relationship to the act of remembering in the light of her father’s death. She evaluates the potency of ritual visualised in her parent’s wedding album, exploring themes of illness and mourning through photography and text.

Related Events & Exhibitions

  • Journeying Home

    • 2nd December 2017
    • 11:30am - 6pm
    • Stephen Lawrence Gallery

    Family Ties Network: Journeying Home explores notions of place, rituals . . .