On the Ground

About

The paintings are made on Indian cotton rag paper with earth from various parts of Europe and the Middle East, including lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, commercially prepared ochres from France and Germany and locally collected colour from Devon.
The idea of this exhibition arose from an awareness of the fact that there are still many vulnerable refugees in Northern France whose lives depend upon support that has not been provided by governments. For example, Refugee Community Kitchen is still supplying daily hot meals to thousands of displaced people in both the Calais region and London. All of their work relies upon donations of resources and time from the greater community as it has done since it began in the autumn of 2015. Therefore it is hoped that this small body of work might help as another reminder that the crisis is ongoing. All the paintings are for sale and 60% of any amount raised by this will be divided between Refugee Community Kitchen and Help Refugees. The remaining 40% would cover costs and perhaps make another volunteering trip possible in the near future. 
 

This endeavour began via fundraising efforts with Creative Collective for Refugee Relief/Art Without Borders on Facebook in 2015, and earlier, with similar groups such as CARA. Those involvements alongside various news reports were what prompted my journey to Calais in the first place. Whilst there I met with a stalwart group of volunteers from Bridport Unitarian Chapel in the Garden, who then kindly hosted ‘On the Ground’ over one weekend in autumn 2017. Since then the remaining work has been shown in Bristol in April 2018, and one painting, Chimera was included in the recent exhibition LANDE: The Calais 'Jungle' and Beyond at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. It goes without saying that this is just one of many, many responses that have taken place worldwide in recent years by groups and individuals, including displaced people themselves, who want to take direct humane action in response to the plight of refugees in Europe and beyond.