Jumanah Younis talks boats and borders with artist Lucy Wood.
Walking into PayneShurvell feels a bit like walking into a scrapyard where a tub of whitewash has exploded. The hull of a dismembered boat is precariously balanced across the small room, the bow reaching up to the ceiling. The wreck is surrounded by and balanced on various bits of wood, a buoy and the odd anchor. A few televisions are dotted around – propped up between fragments of boat – running films on a loop.
The installation is part of Distant Neighbours, the latest exhibition from contemporary artist Lucy Wood, which explores the journey of migrants from North and Central Africa to Lampedusa, a small island off the south coast of Italy. Though the migrants are usually aiming to reach northern Europe, or at the very least the Italian mainland, the small island is the first piece of landmass they encounter after leaving North Africa. Having spent sometimes up to three days on a boat that's only ten metres long holding between 250-300 people, those who make it arrive soaked, exhausted, hungry, and often ill.
The exhibition comprises a series of videos where migrants and Lampedusans talk about their experiences of migration from either end of the process. Wood emphasises the story-telling aspect of the videos as a way of presenting the situation as honestly as possible. She avoids talking to the Italian authorities, who residents say have overrun the island: “I wanted to show local people telling local stories,” she explains to me. In order to listen to these stories, however, you have to step right into the installation. I find myself craning forward precariously over a piece of whitewashed wreckage in order to read a subtitled video, my feet trying to avoid planks of wood with nails poking out. It occurs to me that the way the artist has used the space deliberately makes the whole experience uncomfortable. Elaborating on the videos, Wood points to the subtitles as a reversal of roles; now we are the foreigners.
It’s a hefty topic, and an hour later I’m still in the gallery, engrossed in the story of an Italian woman who brings biscuits and toys for the children of migrants who arrive one morning, some as young as one year-old. “When all the Tunisians came I cooked for a week,” she tells the camera, matter-of-factly. The videos are moving and honest: “Was that good?” asks the same Italian at the end of her story. “Well, it was the truth anyway!” she exclaims, throwing up her hands. Alongside the videos are a series of photographs taken in Lampedusa, which show the makeshift camps that migrants set up for themselves if there’s no space in the ‘Welcome Centre’. There are also a number of photographs taken on boats, now docked in Lampedusa, which made the journey. One shows a mattress in the narrow space under the deck, and Lucy explains to me that some migrants would lie in that space for the entire journey. The photo is chilling, and reminds me of the diagrams of slave ships you find in history textbooks.
I find it interesting how many elements of the exhibition, from the installation to the photographs and the mixed media pieces, display a kind of fascination with the boats. “To me the boat is the seat of the experience,” Lucy explains. “That boat, whilst the migrants are on it, is everything; that vessel is life and death.” After arriving at Lampedusa, the boats are dumped in what Wood refers to as a ‘boat graveyard’, and this dumping ground is the inspiration behind the ghostly installation.
The exhibition tackles a delicate subject, and Wood is careful to try and present her research as objectively as possible, although she admits to a great deal of emotional involvement in her work. She's also planning to sail one of the boats from Lampedusa to London as part of the next chapter of her project; stopping in various European capitals to stage ‘sit-ins’ where people can experience what the journey of migration is like. It’s an ambitious project, but Wood is committed to pulling it off. If she does, it will be a fitting follow-up to her current show. Powerful, well-researched and consciously prepared, this exhibition is both touching and pertinent.
Distant Neighbours continues until 22nd of October 2011
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