FRONT GALLERY RESIDENCY:
JACQUI BARROWCLIFFE
The residency ran from Tuesday 6th February 2024 - Monday 26th February 2024.
As the winner of RuptureXIBIT’s Winter ‘24 Open Call, our first ever residency open call, Jacqui had the opportunity to use the shop front gallery in any way she wanted for three weeks. Her proposal: to undergo a non-traditional residency, split both between her home in North Yorkshire and at RuptureXIBIT, focussing on the challenges artist parents face whilst trying to balance their home life and artistic practice. Dealing with themes of motherhood, absence and presence, time, and urban vs rural life, Jacqui transmits to the gallery daily in analogue and digital forms; through postcards, live feeds, and keeping watch through a nanny cam. In this way, the studio becomes a second child to Jacqui, a third space between her rural home and urban London, where she tries to slow time to her speed.
Throughout this first week, we’ve seen the space transform as Jacqui deepened her exploration into the relationship between the artist’s practice and the construct of time. Discussing the restraints put in place by societal factors around urban living and the expectations and demands of motherhood, Jacqui’s daily communications have sent messages of natural rhythms and rural life, from the personal and private in her home studio, to the roaring of tides climbing the screen behind Rupture’s front windows.
From these digital broadcasts to handmade postcards, fragile with the daily reminder “please treat with care”, Jacqui has filled the space with temporal objects and momentary transportation. A different message lies daily in the printing tray. This morning’s features a sandy landscape, familiar yet seemingly unreachable, almost alien, drawing me in as I look outside, longing to be there. It echos the orange colouration of the broken hourglass splayed across the back of the room and reads: Presence / Absence. As I walk by the window I’m unsure if Jacqui can see me, this communication is tricky, and with the small changes each time I pass I feel Jacqui’s presence, and wonder if she’s there.
With her consistent exploration into juxtaposing factors, and multifaceted approach when investigating the duality of locations, the reality within the gallery is changing: both the analogue and digital communication, the rural and urban spaces, the natural and manmade rhythms and the presence and absence within this remote residency are finding intersection at RuptureXIBIT.
Look out for Jacqui’s communications as you pass by the gallery; they’re daily, and ever changing, as is the nature of this project. Yesterday morning I caught Jacqui at her home studio, working on what looked like anthotype prints, similar to those she worked on here in person, last Tuesday. I wondered if she’d send them on the back of the next postcard, eager for the tactile experience of the physical. Feeling impatient for this, I noticed the barriers in place with digital communication, how it disables the senses from an all encompassing experience. I want to feel the postcard, smell the sea air and listen to the waves and wind. The gallery is transitory, with each addition and communication it changes. But from behind the window, even the tangible is still out of reach, like an artifact or film set. In this way, Jacqui’s space is sealed away, like a biome, developing within itself, but I can’t wait for the opportunity to venture in…
“The process so far has been really interesting, but I must admit keeping up with the different modes of communication everyday is challenging for me, whilst also trying to balance motherhood and daily commitments. Although I had ideas about what these communications would be, they really do evolve on a day by day basis, as I respond to what I’m doing and where I am each day.
Having the space at Rupture, I am constantly thinking of it, of how to reach out to it, and it becomes almost like communicating with someone I care about and am away from, letting them know I am here, thinking of them, every now and then. Dedicating these moments of my time as an act of care.
So far when I have connected, I tend to see more people walking on the other side of the street, so I am looking forward to opening up on Thursday and having some more interactions in person!”
- Jacqui on the process so far, and her excitement for Thursday’s Open Studio.
