Jennifer Gathercole
Statement
My work explores partially occluded, or discarded family narratives often associated with loss and trauma. I take a multifaceted approach; deploying printmaking and textiles, alongside text and audio recordings of fragments of testimony.
I engage others in the collaborative re-fabrication of emotionally freighted photographs, objects and garments. As I work with these objects, I choose to use them as receptacles onto which I and my collaborators can project new meaning. In the 'Made Up' project I worked with my own family members and history.
I link this process of material re-fabrication with the realm of memory, where we also have the capacity to fabricate anew our narratives, realities and emotions. I find that it is through, co-making that the maker is changed along with the outcome of the work, and that through working with an ‘original’ artefact the past can be addressed by actions of making in the present.
Achievements & Experience
I completed an MA in Multidisciplinary Printmaking in 2020 at the University of West England. My work also rests on study of Sociology at Anglia Ruskin University (First Class BA Honours) and at London School of Economics (MA Sociology Research) where I focused on the intersection between sociological and psychoanalytical approaches to atrocities, memory and the unconscious. Through community based work in the UK I also have many years experience of listening to stories of loss, survival (and sometimes recovery) of many individuals in various communities whose voices are marginalised.
I have worked in the community voluntary and public sector for many years with disadvantaged communities, have conducted sociology research using qualitative interviews, conducted oral history interviews and been involved in community based participatory art projects.
Featured Projects:
This image acts as the sign for my ‘Made Up’ project. The project is an audio-visual exploration of tensions around hidden and taboo family narratives. I worked using my own memories, family photographs and garments and I co-made 3 key elements of the body of work with close family members. Etched Aluminium backdrop made by myself with Neon programmed and assembled remotely by my son Han. The excerpt of audio with him is focused around intra-generational making. The text relates to material fabrication and also to how taboo memories can be interpreted as fabrication, as - made up. The apron was made with my mother from my deceased father's discarded workshop jacket without discussion of its meaning or origin. It was an act of imperfect, troubled communication, however we stitched together and this act of shared making emerged as an essentially imperfect form of memorialisation. I worked on my father’s oilskin with my daughter, Nuala. The audio gives a hint of how our different experiences of heritage intertwined and shaped the planned outcome for the garment. The process was located in the liminal space between generations, cultures and rural/urban spaces. I work with imperfect, essentially partial images. The full stories behind them will never be known. The fragments of conversation reflect the challenges for younger descendants in cross-continental excavation of family heritage. Stories are fragmented, the spaces and gaps being greater than the facts and artefacts Through spoken word I work with the idea of descendants re-scripting their past. Through the working and re-working of the images, through the repetition of certain images and through the gathering of my ancestors and myself together I create my own narrative to address the past and the present. 
Made Up & Etched In
Co-Made #1: Made Up Neon
Co-Made #2 Worn again
Co-Made #3 Liminal Re-Fabrication
Partial Stories: Peekaboo
Missed Persons: The Erased Returns