Safe European Home?

About

We live in structures all our lives. Structures surround us, comfort us and contain us. They give us the freedom to launch ourselves into the world – and a place to return to. We all need a home.

During this time of unprecedented migrant and refugee movement across Europe, artists Damian and Delaine Le Bas focus on those who inhabit the outside edges of society. Damian is an Irish Traveller, Delaine an English Romany and together they are familiar with issues of displacement, borders
 and boundaries, which so often become the focus of their work, real or imagined. Damian’s painted maps sit alongside Delaine’s textiles, banners and ephemera, creating an environment that allows us to consider the precariousness of life on the periphery. This exhibition creates a space to discuss the rise of the nation state and the historical contexts that informs our current political situation.

Safe European Home? is an ongoing project, first initiated outside parliament in Vienna, 2011.

This exhibition and associated events is part of Essex Book Festival http://essexbookfestival.org.uk