Structures and Memory (a place called Wurzach)
Essay by Daniel Heaven
Interviews with Shan O’Donnell
Emily de Gruchy
Oliver Le Gresley
Nicole Sheppard
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ArtHouse Jersey Capital House, St Helier JE2 3NN
2 May / 8 June 2025
Essay
Commissioned to mark the 80th anniversary of Jersey’s Liberation, Structures and Memory (a place called Wurzach) brings together new work from Emily de Gruchy, Nicole Sheppard, Shan O’Donnell and Oliver Le Gresley. The exhibition also features 'satellite' contributions from artists Nuril Basri, an Indonesian novelist and Azade Shahmiri, an Iranian playwright and theatre-maker based in Berlin. The exhibition explores the history and experiences of those deported and interned in Wurzach during the occupation, as well as Jersey’s ongoing relationship with Bad Wurzach (as it was renamed in 1950), which is maintained via their cultural exchange programme and twinned status. In her book, Reaching Across the Barbed Wire, Gisela Rothenhäuslers provides insight into this often overlooked history. She writes:
In the autumn of 1942, 618 “casualties of war” - men, women, children and babes in arms - deported on Hitler’s orders from the Channel Island of Jersey, were interned in a Baroque castle in the heart of a small Southern German town, close to the border with Switzerland and Austria [...] The arrival of the families from a small island so far away, interned because of their British lineage behind barbed wire in the heart of a community thus far removed from the horrors of the war raging in Europe, shocked townsfolk.
The subsequent twinning of St Helier and Bad Wurzach did not take place until the summer of 2002, nearly 60 years after those interned were liberated in 1945. This act of reconciliation, cultivated by ex-internees and the people of Bad Wurzach, was a consolidation of their sustained efforts to memorialise the atrocities that had first connected them.
Through the Partnerschaft (twinning) committee, this work continues today, striving to prevent future atrocities and foster a society that values international human rights through its programme of cultural and student exchange.
In the context of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, where the possibility for life in the past, present and future is being foreclosed, the importance of such work cannot be understated. It is vital that our remembrance of the occupation is not hermetically sealed; enabling us, at a time where we celebrate our liberation, to stand in solidarity with those who remain oppressed and under threat. The urgency of such action is clear to see: mainstream politicians in Jersey, the UK and Germany continue to justify, or simply ignore, Israel's systematic dismantling of Palestine. That is, whilst simultaneously marginalising those attempting to speak out. Artists and cultural workers, of course, have been targeted by such efforts, further underlining the necessity for this exhibition to stand in solidarity with those fighting for liberation post-1945.
Incorporating art made in response to archived material, this exhibition is far from a stagnant reflection of the Jersey Archives; on the contrary, the sculptures, photographs, soundscapes, interviews and installations shown here produce a site of contestation, stretching and activating the archive through practices of creation and imagination. In so doing, they destabilise the established structures and memories of the occupation and its legacy - opening new pathways of understanding and solidarity on both the local and global scale.
Composed of both visual and oral histories, The Canary Still Sings in Her Cage centres seven British nationals who, during infancy, were deported and interred at camps in Biberach and
Wurzach from 1942-1945. O’Donnell captures the now elderly survivors in their homes, exhibiting their portraits within a 1940s style living room, alongside archival photographs of the subjects’ younger selves, their families, and fellow exinternees. A wartime radio, placed within reach of the armchair provided, creates intimate conditions for listening to the interviews conducted by the artist.
The Canary Still Sings in her Cage activates practises of listening, receptivity, and silent accounting, as O’Donnell’s questions allow each participant to elaborate and reflect on their story. They do so cautiously, selectively – and, most notably, with information that has been passed down by family or circulated between one another. The repetitions, ellipses and rhymes between them accumulate across the sequence of interviews, becoming formal signs: of return, of shared space, and of (re)telling. In bearing witness to their stories, one is struck by the simultaneous presence and absence of those who feature. Here, then, the canary not only sings, but is clearly heard.
Away from the visual arts, Emily de Gruchy has produced a soundscape entitled Two Places: One Time. The title refers to the work's mode of address, as well as its subject of interest. By merging an array of field recordings from Jersey and referencing Bad Wurzach, de Gruchy creates a meeting point between the two places: a sonic third space, of sorts, that listeners are dropped into. The ambient sounds we hear are blended seamlessly, their source practically impossible to discern. Stripped of any spatial-temporal specificity, the soundscape is defined by its liminality: it is neither here nor there, both in the past and the present. Standing at approximately thirty minutes, traversing this (in)distinct spacetime foregrounds the ongoing entanglement between these two places, complicating the notion of contemporary Page 4
dislocation. History isn’t dialectical, de Gruchy seems to suggest, it cannot be removed. Conversely, history's continued presence will be wraithlike in its invisible yet bruising impact - a concept underlined by the immateriality of the sonic form.
Oliver Le Gresley’s installation, For a Time, is a reflection on the cultural life that existed for British prisoners at Wurzach. In comparison to other persecuted groups, the British prisoners detained here were contextually privileged, and one way of evidencing this fact is through the cultural and artistic provisions they were provided. In her chapter on theatre, music and other hobbies at the Wurzach Schloss, Rothenhäusler outlines some of the resources provided by the organisations like the Red Cross and the YMCA, which included: ‘a projector to screen “approved” British films, and also a gramophone and some records [...] And, even better, they donated a number of musical instruments which, together with the existing Schloss piano, helped to form the camp orchestra.’
Grounded in practises of performance, the artforms represented in Le Gresley’s installation are more than pastimes: they are worlds. What is at stake in this piece is the task of (re)animating these worlds, of demonstrating how, in the context of detainment, they became modes of resistance, spaces for imagining otherwise. Informed by this dichotomy of physical confinement and creative freedom, Le Gresley installs a performance space at the heart of this piece, alongside a theatre structure. Black and white footage is projected throughout, oscillating between a choreographed dance routine and a sunlit treeline. These elements combine to produce an atmosphere of unreality that runs across the piece. More than this, however, they also serve oppositional functions.
The footage of the treeline holds a profound melancholy. Its
hazy, distorted quality indicating a fracture, a sense of dislocation from the outside world. In viewing these images, we are confronted by the confinement enforced on those held at Wurzach. Placed alongside such images, the elements of performance in this piece stand in stark contrast; their verve, dynamism and outwardness highlighting how, in the context of detainment, performance enacted a momentary subversion of the mechanics of imprisonment. In staging these oppositional forces, then, For a Time demonstrates what artistic production and performance enabled at Wurzach: to rehearse resistance, to rehearse escape and to rehearse freedom.
Nicole Sheppard’s sculpture, Translations at the Angle of Reflection, is exhibited here alongside an interview she recorded with Angela Francey, the ex-chair and founder of the twinning committee. Throughout the interview, Francey, an influential figure in the reconciliation between Jersey and Bad Wurzach, underlines the important role communication played in this work. Communication, that is, across different histories, cultures and languages. Taking this as her visual motif, Sheppard has produced a trio of sculptures centered around communicative and audio technologies. Two of the sculptures feature conical horns, with the third equipped with a pulp speaker. All three sculptures are exhibited alongside a plethora of archival material, documenting the events before, during and after the twinning of Jersey and Bad Wurzach.
Constructed from various found objects, these sculptures (materially) replicate the ethos of the twinning committee: to unify that which was once fractured, and turn it into something altogether new. Ostensibly a work of visual art, Translations at the Angle of Reflection is equally concerned with what is heard, as it is with what is seen. The visual components of this work stand to amplify and engender new ways of hearing and seeing the post-war history of Jersey and Bad Wurzach - namely, by
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tracing the cross-cultural communication and exchange that cultivated this relationship. In so doing, this project endeavours to further activate the archive, an exemplification of this exhibition's attempts to expand and invite further attention towards practices of history-making and (re)telling.
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Artist Interviews
The following interviews were conducted by email in the preparation of Structures and Memory (a place called Wurzach) in spring 2025.
Shan O’Donnell Interview
Daniel Heaven: This project centers the personal experiences and family archives of those who survived an often overlooked component of the German occupation of the Channel Islands. Why was it important for you to make these direct accounts the focus of your work, and what have the responses been from those you invited to contribute?
Shan O’Donnell: The focus of this project really started because of my lack of knowledge around this part of our local history. I had never come across the topic in my 27 years living in Jersey and can’t say I remember learning about it in school either. I had discussions with friends who grew up here too who had the same limited knowledge as me. I used this project as a tool for my own learning, to hear first-hand accounts of those who have experienced displacement felt important and necessary in forming my own understanding of it.
I feel really honoured to have been given the opportunity to learn from some of the ex-internees and get to know them personally. They are such wonderful people and have been so generous with sharing their stories and time with me. The responses from Lola, Ursula, Francelise, Sandra, David, Roy and Tony have been wonderful. They have each expressed their gratitude in their stories being shared and we’ve really connected in our mutual want for this part of our local history
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to be more widely known. I hope I make them proud.
DH: In viewing this work, I felt that I was bearing witness to the stories told by the participants. Can you elaborate on your formal decision making for this project? Namely, what informed your approach to conducting the interviews and shooting the portraits of the participants, and what led you to utilise the mock-1940s living room that structures the exhibition of this work?
SO’D: My creative practice often involves archival materials, audio of some description and of course, photographs. This helps me to build a narrative and bring the audience into the story, to immerse them. Using a Bronica ETRS medium format camera, I photographed the participants in their homes and their gardens. I chose these spaces as symbols of freedom and comfort.
The questions I asked were purposefully vague so they could be asked to anyone who has experienced or who is experiencing displacement. I was particularly thinking about the impacts of displacement and war with my own personal point of access to the topic being a witness, through social media and news updates, to Palestinians currently facing the hardship of displacement.
The more I worked on this project, the more obvious it felt for me to ask the participants for personal archival photographs of themselves and their parents from just before or just after the war, as of course they wouldn’t have had any from during. I wanted these images to be a reminder to audiences of just how young those I interviewed were at the time of their displacement but also how young their parents were and to invite audiences to think about just how life-altering and scary it would have been for these young families to walk into the unknown.
The mock-1940s living room scene was a way for me to connect the audience with the participants. At first, the project was just going to be the portraits I took of the ex-internees on a white wall with headphones next to them, much like a previous work I exhibited, Guys and Dolls. The more I thought about it the less this made sense for what we were creating. I’ve seen many artists create mock scenes like this one and was particularly inspired by an exhibition I had seen some years back now by photographer Sebastian Bruno. The living room scene acts as a gateway to immerse the audience. They can sit in the armchair and listen to the ex-internees talk about their experiences as if listening through a radio transmitter/receiver from the time. The archival images and the contemporary portraits are mixed together in a sort of gallery wall that feels like home. I wanted this mock scene to be a comfort and maybe a symbol of hope for happy returns.
DH: I am pleased to hear that this project will be deposited at Jersey Archive soon after this exhibition. How would one go about visiting the archive, should they wish to explore this history further, and what sort of materials can they expect to find there? Additionally, how might the inclusion of the oral histories from this project stand to expand their current World War II collection?
SO’D: The first thing to do before visiting the Archive would be to do some research on their online catalogue (www. catalogue.jerseyheritage.org). Here you can do simple searches with keywords like ‘Wurzach’ and a whole bunch of catalogued materials will show up for you to scroll through. I’d say have a good look through these and write down any references that you might be interested in seeing in person (e.g. L/C/01/B/A/4 - watercolour painting of the main entrance to Schloss in the centre of Wurzach). Once you’ve got your references together, email or call the Archive to make an
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appointment and give them the references ahead of time so they can have these ready for you to view when you arrive (I think at least 24hrs notice is best). If you don’t have internet access or struggle to do this on your own, you can always give the Archive a call and a staff member will help point you in the right direction.
There are many materials at the Archive to view! From the time, you will mainly find paintings done by internees that help illustrate the environment of the internment camp. Some textile materials are in the museum collection including brooches, embroidery, hand woven bags. There are, of course, plenty of letters to and from ex-internees. I haven’t uncovered everything myself! Notably, the Green family have donated much of their own personal archive from the time. Ursula Green was a small child when she was taken with the rest of her family to Wurzach and I was able to discuss this with her in our interview for this project.
I’m hoping our interviews will be a useful research tool for those interested in learning more about the topic and give researchers a better understanding of displacement from a child's perspective. For the exhibition, I have only selected parts of each interview to feature so the Archive will have the full hour long interviews. For me, hearing the first-hand accounts of some of the ex-internees helps bring their stories into the present. I feel much more connected to their stories and feel the humanity coming through with the pauses, the signs, the laughs, you really get to connect with them. It can be so easy to almost lose the humanity of a story about war because it is something, fortunately, many of us cannot relate to. This is why I think the audio interviews are so valuable and necessary in bringing humanity and personal understanding of what it was like to experience displacement in this way.
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I’d like to note that Chris Addy has been working on an oral history project for over 20 years, interviewing those who experienced the Second World War in some capacity, whether it be through displacement to internment camps or Occupation. He has been dedicated to building this archive and ensuring islanders' stories are documented and shared. I believe these are within the Jersey Heritage collections, although some may be with the Jersey War Tunnels.
Emily de Gruchy Interview:
Daniel Heaven: The title of this work, Two Places: One Time, indicates a collapse of distinct modes of time and space. That is to say: in this work, we are at once in the past and the present, both here and there. What do you hope to make visible by transporting listeners to this (in)distinct space-time, and how does working with sound amplify this?
Emily de Gruchy: When I began conceptualizing the soundscape, I was first drawn to the cultural diplomacy involved in the St Helier Bad Wurzach Partnerschaft. The 2002 twinning between the Parish of St. Helier (Jersey) and the spa town Bad Wurzach (Germany) was, to quote the Partnerschaft: “a simple but highly emotional act of reconciliation [...] [and] the culmination of thirty years of dedication and persistence by ex-internees.” In a time when tensions within international politics are rising, it is more pressing than ever that we come together to recognise our similarities, and how much we have progressed socially since the Second World War. I admire members of the Partnerschaft, and all those who have written first-hand accounts; as none of them are afraid to demonstrate their empathy and compassion for affected diasporas all around the world that perhaps are similar to their own experiences from the 1940s. I wanted to replicate that
compassion, and highlight to the listener that these places are just… places. The majority of the found sounds are not prescribed ‘situations’; the people you hear are not ‘actors’they could be anyone, anywhere (if you choose to believe that). I have included samples of things that would most likely be included in both places, such as church bells, farm animals, countryside breezes, and streams. I wanted to strip away as much of the technological elements of life as I could, to create that blur of time and space - even during conflict, nature is the prevailing force of beauty, solace, and resistance. I also think that it’s a symbol of national pride too.
Sound is an effective medium for many things, but for me, it is most effective at making people lose the sense of solidified ‘space’. My tutor once used a sound installation example in a style similar to the painting ‘The Treachery of Images’ by the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte - he placed several rubber ducks around a room and then played noises of cows mooing. It was a simple (yet highly effective and hilarious) way to destabilize our predisposed confidence in what we know. I love sonic art! I like giving people more questions than answers with my work; that’s why I’ve asked so many questions in my introductory panel - Who do we listen to? How do we listen to them? Why do we need to listen?
DH: There is a seamlessness to this work that made me curious about how it had come together. Can you talk about how you went about capturing and selecting the sounds used, and how you converted these fragments into an immersive soundscape?
EdG: I purposefully included no jarring moments other than the sound of a sampled V2 rocket, and some Germanic shouting sampled from a protest - that’s how the seamlessness has been preserved. The other works within the exhibition are
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visually dominated, and I didn’t want to impede the messages that they’re trying to convey through their mediums - I respect Nicole, Shan and Ollie’s work very much!
My Jersey samples are recorded at some of my favourite places in Jersey, including the Railway Walk, Belcroute Bay, and the Rivoli Clock Tower in town. My samples designated to Wurzach are found sounds associated with small German spa towns like Wurzach - I was not able to visit in person due to circumstances beyond my control, but I am hoping to visit in the future. When it comes to technical work, automation is a sonic artist’s best friend. I am also very lucky to work with an incredible sound engineer who smooths out any edges that my work may have - a good piece of advice I’d give to any budding composer working with electronic mediums is to build a friendship with a sound engineer!
DH: In addition to this soundscape, you have also produced a piece of concert music, entitled Four Seasons of Displacement, which is due to be performed alongside this exhibition. In what ways does this work differ, if at all, from Two Places: One Time, and when and where is it programmed to premier?
EdG: Four Seasons of Displacement is a piece for symphony orchestra, and the title plays on Antonio Vivaldi’s famous ‘Four Seasons’ Violin concertos and abstractly maps the passage of time for prisoners of war within the Wurzach Schloss. It differs from Two Places: One Time as it is deliberately centred on the past, not the present. It’s a historically informed musical narrative.
The music itself is inspired by three accounts from a variety of ages during the war: Jean Ethel Mary Tipping (age at deportation: nineteen); Gerald Robert King (age at deportation: seven); and Michael Shepherd (age at deportation: fourteen).
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My sources/inspirations consist of diary entries at the time of imprisonment compiled alongside historical context (Tipping, Shepherd), and memories reported from an older age and looking back (King). Very helpfully, the majority of these publications contain pictures and drawings, which makes my job as a composer much easier as it makes the experiences all the more visceral. I have spent a great deal of time weaving these people’s words into the music, literally, and have done my best to bring their experiences to life. It was a life-altering thing to read about the experience of these four individuals, and I cannot even begin to imagine what it must have been like for all the internees. To quote Michael Shepherd: “Freedom, a word often used but always taken for granted. It is not until someone says that you cannot do this or you cannot do that, that makes one realise what life is all about”. The piece will be premiered on Friday 23rd May 2025 at the St Helier Methodist Centre, and will include narrations of the texts being read by a speaker.
Oliver Le Gresley Interview:
Daniel Heaven: You recently visited Bad Wurzach - can you speak about your time there, and how it informed this piece?
Oliver Le Gresley: I visited Bad Wurzach last September. It’s a small town at the centre of a parish 50% larger than Jersey, 30 miles from lake Constance. The Alps are visible to the south. In addition to visiting Schloss Wurzach, where internees were detained, I walked in the marshes, where they would have taken guarded walks. On the same trip I travelled a little further south to the German alps to witness the Viehscheid: the practice of transhumance; cattle are driven from high summer pastures to lower ones for the winter.
Set in the pleasant countryside of southern Germany, Schloss
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Wurzach was built as a palatial home. By the time the internees arrived it was a Catholic school leased to the ruling powers as a POW camp, and was not in immaculate condition. After my visit I was interested in the idea of a “palace”, as a prison and what place beauty and art might have in the lives of the internees. I thought about the constancy of things alongside the constancy of change. Victor Frankl, a Jewish psychologist, reflected on his experience as a prisoner in several Nazi concentration camps:
‘As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before. Under their influence he sometimes forgot his own frightful circumstances. If someone had seen our faces on the journey from Auschwitz to a Bavarian camp as we beheld the mountains of Salzburg with their summits glowing in the sunset, through little barred windows of the prison carriage, he would never have believed that those were the faces of men who had given up all hope of life and liberty.’
DH: Your work adopts an abstract approach in responding to the memory and legacy of this history. What insight does a departure from realist representation provide in this context?
OLG: To broaden and expand the reach of this history by removing some of the realism, allowing the viewer not to be confined; that by taking the story as a starting point, opening it up through abstraction, there might be the chance to consider and assess the nature of conflict and form a response to it.
DH: Performance is at the centre of For a Time, something that features in your previous work, too. What is it about the theme and/or form of performance that prompts this recurrence, and
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what does its presence in this work make possible?
OLG: Ex-internee Victor Croft writes of the unreality of life within the wire. Indeed, the structure of life in the Schloss imitated life outside, with a hint of the absurd: there were sports clubs, theatre productions, a hierarchy of leadership and responsibility, and work was done. The monotony of daily existence was imposed upon life inside the wire, just as it is outside. It seemed that the Schloss was a concentration of reality, like a theatre.
I was interested in using the moving body as a method to investigate the reality of life in the Schloss. With movements ephemeral and fleeting, it is an attempt to join the dream-like otherness of the experience. Set to Nocturnal after John Dowland by Benjamin Britten Op.70 for guitar, the piece is a theme and variations where the theme, Come, heavy sleep, by John Dowland, unusually appears at the end of the piece, comes as a resolution. Despite its original melancholy lyrics, somewhat like dawn’s arrival after a disturbed night, there is a suggestion of hope.
Nicole Sheppard Interview:
Daniel Heaven: Your sculpture, Translations at the Angle of Reflection, centres a trio of conical horns, all of which have been filled with ephemera relating to the post-war relationship between Bad Wurzach and the Channel Islands. Can you talk about the archival material you encountered during your research for this project, and how it - both conceptually and materially - informed your work?
Nicole Sheppard: Before this project, like many people across the Channel Islands, I had very little knowledge surrounding the
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deportation of British-born Channel Islanders and their families in 1942. The archive holds a wealth of material relating to the internment, reconciliation and later twinning of St Helier and Bad Wurzach. Initially I began to view sketches, greeting cards and other memorabilia made and collected by the internees between 1942-45. Through further investigations I found myself moved by the story of reconciliation in the years following 1945. The first family to revisit Bad Wurzach was in 1954, but major attempts at reconciliation and of a more formal twinning began in the 1970s.
Through communication, goodwill and hard work, rich social and cultural exchanges have formed. Eighty years since the Liberation this continues. I am fascinated by the fractured history of the place that has brought these two communities together. There were several documents and accounts that were particularly interesting to me and helped to form the conceptual idea behind the work. This has largely contributed to the concept of communication, particularly through conversations with Angela Francey BEM, the first chair of the twinning committee, who dedicated over three decades to reconciliation and partnership. It was in this discussion she highlighted her multilingualism and the role this played within the reconciliation. This notion led to a visual influence within my work, exploring the idea of communicative technologies, radar towers, audio, sound cones and voice amplifiers. These fractured and disjointed objects are reconstructed countering their material otherness. The role of communication is also highlighted in a quote from the Bailiff’s Liberation address on the 9th of May 2002. The Bailiff at the time was Sir Philip Bailhache: “The German language, once a symbol of oppression, is now but a means of communication.” This quote has been translated into morse code and emitted from a motion sensor speaker as part of the installation.
DH: Alongside the aforementioned horns, your work features a number of different objects and materials. What was the guiding principle for what could be included in this piece, and how did you go about sourcing them? Moreover, how did this inform your approach to constructing the piece, if at all?
NS: For me, there was not a project specific guiding principle for sourcing materials per se. As an artist, I am particularly motivated by the encounters of everyday objects and exploring a visual language grounded in the autonomy of matter. In this context, I think it relates well to the exploration of society and movement of reconciliation. Particularly in the sense that through the lifetimes of humans there are objects and places that connect us, whilst continuing to evolve.
In some regards I chose materials to evoke an era-specific nostalgia, for example, the use of concrete and steel is reminiscent of German fortifications and bunkers across the Island. However, other aspects relate to a personal style and ethos. The materials I have used are wide ranging some of which include; hypertufa (cement, coconut coir and vermiculite), egg carton paper pulp, car speakers and vehicle ramps. In my mind, these objects evoke a sense of movement, whilst remaining static the object functionality is questioned.
In a similar way to choosing the materials, when creating the structural forms (whilst planned to some degree) often involves a very responsive and intuitive making process. I created the frames with Neil Mckenzie who has his own business, Art Metal. Working together he showed me a range of offcuts he already had in store. We decided to work with steel that was previously designed to be used as part of a gate. On the other hand, I ordered a truss to create the taller section of the installation. Interestingly this is the piece I had the most difficulty creating. I felt quite uninspired by the brand new aluminium when it arrived,
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here we manipulated the material to perform as an aged object, so this piece is something else entirely.
DH: Sculpture regularly appears in exhibitions and public memorials concerned with The Second World War. What’s led you to becoming an abstract sculptor, and how does the discipline lend itself to exploring the themes of this show?
NS: The role of sculpture in public memorials is something I began to reflect on during the research process of this project. Two works particularly related to this are the Liberation Sculpture created by Phillip Jackson and unveiled on 9th May 1995 and the tree sculpture commissioned to mark the 70th anniversary of the Liberation by artist Robert Koenig in Bad Wurzach. I think, in these examples sculpture offers a sense of placemaking, whilst the structures stand in momentum themselves with a physical significance, they also create a space for social exchange and vibrancy.
For me, sculpture offers a very personal creating process, I love working with tactile materials. I am first and foremost informed by the materials in my everyday life, looking from my home, to roadworks, construction sites and things like that. So it is interesting for me to adapt and use these materials in my practice, to gain some understanding of the material properties. This same sentiment, enables me to reuse materials across multiple artworks, repurpose and revalue the objects. To me this is an important question, what happens to an artwork when it is no longer being exhibited?
This exhibition certainly challenged me to consider my relationship with sculpture in a new light, applying ecological based, new materialist theory, to both past and present local and global political landscapes. It has enabled me to consider new modes of working within my own artistic practice.
Biographies
Emily de Gruchy
Emily de Gruchy is an experimental composer and sonic artist specialising in musical cryptography and aleatory processes. Born and raised in Jersey, Channel Islands, traditional Jèrriais culture often influences her compositions, providing a unique amalgamation of French and British sonorities. In recent years, she has moved towards creating sonic art and soundscapes aiming to bring prior experiences of working with professional ensembles back to Jersey. Emily has received notable mentions and prizes since the start of her career: National Young Composer’s Award finalist (NCEM) 2017; Picture Gallery Composer-in-Residence, Royal Holloway, 2018; Royal Holloway New Music Collective residency, 2016-2019; Daryl Runswick Composition Competition finalist, 2021; composer-inresidence, Vale of Glamorgan Festival, 2022; sound artist, Channel Islands Contemporary Art Show, 2024, ArtHouse Jersey & Art for Guernsey.
Daniel Heaven
Daniel Heaven is a writer and researcher based in Jersey and London. He specialises in critical theories, histories and contemporaryartistic practises with particular reference to science fiction and alternative futurisms.
Oliver Le Gresley
Oliver Le Gresley is an artist exploring relationships between craft, ruralism, place, folk culture and ideas of utopia through use of narrative, fictional encounters, exploration and observation of place on foot. Exploring the performative element to making; the ephemerality found in dance and music; the process and motion involved in making, often repetitive and extended over hours or days, the manual
movement and rhythm experienced when using agricultural hand tools on the family farm. Born in Jersey, Channel Islands, Oliver received a BA Hons in Fine Art followed by an MA in Textile Design from University College Falmouth. He apprenticed for a period under silk weaver Homare Yamashita of Meyu Studio, Hachijyo-jima, Japan and later spent a year working with Textile Designer Tamaki Niime.
Shan O’Donnell
Shan is a documentary photographer. They studied an undergraduate degree at the University of South Wales in Documentary Photography. They are the founder of Fancy A Pint? Artist Talk series, an editor of Éditions Emile and a founding member of Jersey Royals. Through a combination of documentary and performance, their practice primarily explores the gendered experience, both personal and within contemporary and historical capitalist Britain. Shan’s practice is informed by photographs, text, audio, moving stills and archival research. Most recently, they exhibited their project Guys and Dolls at the Channel Islands Contemporary Art Show (2024) with ArtHouse Jersey and Arts for Guernsey.
Nicole Sheppard
Nicole Sheppard was born in Fife, Scotland and is currently based in Jersey, Channel Islands. She was the winner of the Young Artist category of the Visual Art Open (2024) and exhibited as part of the New Contemporaries (2022) at The Ferens & Humber Street Gallery as well as South London Gallery. Projects include: Muck and the Mire at Paradise Works, Manchester (2024); NGVU Artist Residency Podgorica, Montenegro (2024). She was a recipient of the Rivington Fund travel bursary (2023).
Structures and Memory (a place called Wurzach)
Produced by ArtHouse Jersey in association with the St Helier Bad Wurzach Partnerschaft as part of Liberation 80 and with the support of Jersey Archive.
Head of Programme: James Tyson
Gallery & Events Manager: Katherine Wood
Programme Coordinator: Amy Baker
Education Officer: Anna Shipley
Technical Manager: JP Le Blond
Producing & Technical Assistant: Scott Evans
Exhibitions & Projects Assistant: Nicole Sheppard
Special thanks to Lola Garvin and the St Helier Bad Wurzach Partnerschaft for their warmth and generosity in sharing their experiences and contributing to the discussions that have shaped the making of the artworks, this exhibition and its accompanying events and presentations. Also thanks to Stuart Nicolle at Jersey Archive and Chris Addy at Jersey Heritage.
Design by Robert Hoskins / www.designbyhoskins.co.uk
ArtHouse Jersey - Critical Note #2
"to create that blur of time and space
- even during conflict, nature is the prevailing force of beauty, solace, and resistance."
- Emily de Gruchy