‘Ongoing Journeys’ - Reflections on Artistic Support and Development, and Having Space to Think
Rich Wiles reflects on the work he has undertaken with support from the St Hugh's Foundation for the Arts
Work on this project has allowed me to refocus and restructure my practice significantly. I believe it has been a major stepping stone that I will be able to look back on over future years as the much needed bridge through which my practice and life were able to move coherently from my time in Palestine to my time back in the UK.
For many months now, and with the support of the St Hugh's Foundation for the Arts, I have worked intensively with a family who have quite recently arrived in the UK from Syria. Although beginning in a traditional documentary format it has over time become a collaborative and participatory project. This ongoing work will be the main focus of a new exhibition that will tour in 2019 and an educational multi-media tool that will be launched through workshops in local secondary schools before, hopefully, being spread wider geographically.
Early on in the work I came to feel, happily, that our personal relationship was creating a 'bridge' for the family between their former lives and their new lives - through my own background and experiences in the Middle East and my (although limited) language skills. As they were new in the country I have been able to assist them in various challenges and thus, hopefully, support the progression of their new lives in some small ways. Yet significantly, over time, I have also come to realise that this relationship is reciprocal. If I was providing a 'bridge' for them, so they were also providing a bridge for me - a link to my time in Palestine, to our shared experiences (sometimes quite dark), and to my ongoing journey with my family as we attempt to navigate through the challenges and complexities (both legal and social/cultural) of passing through the UK's immigration system and relocating to the UK.
My relationship with the family is no longer merely creative or professional. As an artist I have never worked in the detached manner of the many acclaimed photographers for whom 'distance' is imperative. My work is socially-engaged on every level and I am deeply committed to that focus. Somehow, somewhere down the line, through this deeply personal collaborative project I have become part of their story as they have become part of mine, and so have my own family. Boundaries between 'work' and 'life' have become blurred. I have been privileged to share so much with the family - being at the hospital for the birth of their new baby, translating for them, spending time at the childrens' schools, enjoying celebrations together - and now, with the birth of my new baby and the developing friendship between our families collectively the relationships continue to build.
It could be considered that maybe through this project I am in fact metaphorically photographing my own life, and trying to make sense of it. The level of intimacy that comes out through my photographs of the family is something that many of the arts professionals who have reviewed the work-in-progress recently have picked up on - many have commented that it creates a contrast with so much that is being done around the refugee issue currently. This work rejects the slightly 'Orientalist' approach to the issue that has been assumed in some cases - this project is a story of family and relationships, and, simply, people who want a chance to live. 'Otherness' is absent.
I have spent many years working as a socially engaged artist exploring the role that art can play in 'change'. This can work on many levels. Through the experiences that this ongoing project has brought and continues to bring, my belief in such work has only strengthened, but work aside, my realisation that my work and my life and ideas are in fact intensely related concepts that need not be kept apart is fundamental here. I have no desire to be a 'detached' photographer, or an impartial 'reporter' of events. I need to 'live' my work and to let it evolve from deep inside me.
Such realisations have only been allowed to foster due to having the space and time to work and think clearly. For an artist, such an opportunity is golden. With financial support to artists at such a premium in today's economic and social climate, the true space to think and create diminishes, and creativity suffers. The arts must not be allowed to develop in to the sole domain of those who are financially privileged enough to be able to dedicate their time to their practice. The support that the St Hugh's Foundation for the Arts has given me has allowed my ideas to flourish and my practice to develop deeply through this project, and for that I am deeply indebted.
Rich Wiles, 2018