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Delaine Le Bas' Commission Piece for The Living Album project Funded by Arts Council England, Delaine is producing a unique piece of art specifically for the project." to has produced and please could you also delete the sentence: The final piece will tour with the exhibition, so make sure you come along and have a look We Have A History
 We Have A History A Commissioned Piece (Funded By The Arts Council) For The Living Album - Hampshire's Gypsy Heritage (Supported By Heritage Lottery Fund And Hampshire County Council) From a narrative culture and with this as its starting point the piece began to develop when I looked at transcripts of taped conversation that I had recorded about 10 years ago with my Nan and one of my Great Uncles. My artistic practice involves accumulating material over a period of time that becomes part of the work at some point, but even before it is used has a place within the structure and story of my art. The taped conversations and other memorabilia were part of this ongoing collection. The piece was initially based on these conversations which were peppered with name places and details of working on the land, mainly in the Hampshire area. Other collage pieces were collected including some that I acquired in Alton after visiting Family graves in Binsted and Holybourne. I had already decided to base some of the embroidery on a section of conversation that I had had with Nan describing dresses that my Great Grandad would buy from "the pinna man" at Bently Fair: I decided to transform a character who constantly reappears in my work into an image of my Nan with, as she described, black hair, a navy, red and white spotted dress and Wellington boots. The photographs used are all mirror images of the originals. This is a quirk of the process involved in transferring photographs onto fabric, usually avoided by flipping the images initially. I have deliberately left the images inverted in order to distinguish between the image that is seen and the reality that exists behind it. Using these mirror images emphasises the difference between these two perspectives, the outside and the inside, and continues a theme that is constant in my work: that rarely are things quite as they seem. For me one of the most important aspects of my culture is that the general perspective from outside the culture is very different from the reality experienced living within it. My Nan has no images of any of the wagons that they had. There were some photographs of my Nan as a small girl sitting on the front of a Reading wagon, but Aunt Betsey's husband Uncle Wink took them with him when he went to war and so they disappeared. Wagons also were like a moving bank account, and if the Family fell on hard times the wagon would have to be sold and the Family would go back into tents. The front of the wagon is echoed in the layout of the different parts of the piece of work, the viewer looking at and into it, reading the history of the Family. Some of the images have been juxtaposed with place names as part of an underlying narrative. For instance, the photograph of Great Uncle Goliath's funeral which left from Leonard Ayres's bungalow in Andover to return to Binsted is placed under the embroidered name of Andover. The hand tinted colour photograph of Great Uncle Goliath, who was only 21 when he died (he was electrocuted while out collecting scrap metal - see newspaper cutting) is placed under the name Alton. There are two points in particular to be stressed concerning this choice of images: a) That some Travellers were already settled within the local community at that point in time; others were not then and the fact that many travellers are still not settled shows an innate ability to maintain a different way of life despite the confines of the present day climate. b) To describe that even though Family members are scattered throughout different parts of the country, even the world, there is a place to return to in the cemetery at Binsted and I am constantly aware of my Family history through this place. I have included the cottage opposite The White Hart Inn where Aunt Betsey lived at one point to underline the difference between Gypsies as subject matter and as a living people who experience their own history as something quite different. Sir Alfred Munnings apparently stayed at The White Hart before going out into the Hop Fields to sketch and paint. While he depicted Travellers as an artist and from the outside their own history remained very distinct from his work. This is an issue I have struggled with somewhat. Even though there are many paintings and drawings of Travellers throughout history there has been very little factual detail of their History, their language or any other aspects of their culture. Much that is written appears to be a fantastical account that is very romanticised, and which still colours many perceptions of what it means to be a Traveller. These myths still continue today and in many cases seem to be ingrained within our society. I wished to emphasise the fact of History within the County over a period of time, and that although there are many people within the County who are visible there are probably just as many who are invisible. The saying "There's birds in the bushes and ears and eyes in the sky" is something that my Nan has always said. It conjures up the feeling that most Travellers have that they are always under the spotlight and that there is always someone, somewhere, watching, listening, waiting to see what they will do. The school photograph of myself is included to raise the general question of perception. I started school in 1970. As you can see from the photograph I have my ears pierced and my shirt has an embroidered collar. In today's world of multiple piercing it seems very tame but at the time it was only Traveller girls who had their ears pierced that early and so instantly it marks you out from others. This again is an emphasis on history and how time changes things; it is also to emphasise the proliferation of Romany/Gypsy/Traveller culture within the community at large, in spite of the stigma that still exists if you actually belong to the Traveller community. The piece has developed organically with the inclusion of all this information. It could possibly grow further as there is still more accumulated material that could be used but for now it stands as it is, as a small piece of my Family history that emphasises that fact that there is a living, internal History to the Traveller community. The piece that I have produced is just a small slice of that. Delaine Le Bas |
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