Joy Gregory

UCL Institute of Advanced Studies is delighted to welcome Joy Gregory for this Talking Points Seminar.

Respondents: Megan Laws, Doctoral Student, Department of Anthropology, LSE and Gabriella Nugent, PhD Student, History of Art Department, UCL

In July 2005, I sat on the porch at the home of an elderly lady who spoke a now almost extinct tongue. She and her sister were recounting their life story and by way of illustration she called a child to bring out an old suitcase under her bed. Out of the case she pulled two faded photocopies of photographs that appeared to be from an anthropological book and were seemingly unconnected.

Eventually I understood these images to be photographs of her and her family. Earlier this year I returned to the Kalahari and discovered that both the sisters are now dead but spent time with their descendants. They happily posed individually and for a family portrait. Mindful of earlier representations of their community, they were adamant in their wish not to end up on a postcard.

I am now at a stage in this project where I am considering how to represent the two sisters and their story. I wonder if and/or how to include these images in that work.

Biographies

Born in England to Jamaican parents, Joy Gregory’s work has been influenced by a combination of race, gender and aesthetics often reflecting on issues colonization and its effects on culture and identity politics. She attended the Royal College of Art where she was awarded a Masters in Photography in 1986. Gregory has exhibited and worked internationally featuring in many Biennales and Festivals as well as receiving numerous awards.

She was shortlisted for the Mary Seacole Memorial –a major sculpture commission for London and the General Election Artist Commission in 2015. In 2002, Gregory received the NESTA Fellowship, which enabled her to pursue a long-term project around endangered language. The first work from this research ‘Gomera’ was premiered at the 2010 Sydney Biennale and forms part of a major survey show and touring exhibition -Lost Languages and other stories, which opened at Impressions Gallery, Bradford.

Gregory has recently returned from the Kalahari where she has been continuing her research and work on this series . Alongside this she has been working on two further projects on the island of Jamaica one on Medicinal Plants and the other based on the life and times of fashion photographer, Trevor Owen who came to prominence around the time of Jamaica's independence

Her work is featured in many collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia; and Yale University, New Haven. She is an Honorary Research Associate at the Slade School of Art, University College London where she is based.

Megan Laws' research interests include Ju|'hoansi, debt and healing in Botswana and Namibia.

Gabriella Nugent's research centres on contemporary lens-based practices in the Democratic Republic of Congo with specific focus on questions of time, sound and movement.

IAS Talking Points: Photography, Representation and a Family Portrait