In House: Ain Bailey and Holly Graham

18 Sep-5 Nov 2024

Overview

In House: Ain Bailey and Holly Graham is the third in our series of duo exhibitions organised by and for Studio Voltaire’s onsite community of studio artists. 

This exhibition presents two works: Holly Graham's three-channel video Petname, 2014 and Ain Bailey's sculpture Din/Resonance In Blue, 2019. Both works delve into the artists' Jamaican familial heritage, contemplating the sonic memories that permeate and define diasporic kinships. Complementing these works is a new collaborative piece, a wallpaper that references a design found in Holly Graham's grandmother's house.

Petname probes the tradition of pet names within Caribbean families. More familiar than the given names, these nicknames signify intimate familial relationships and reflect the structure of the family unit. Through interviews with Graham’s relatives, the film captures conversations rich with intimate migrant narratives. Encapsulating histories of diaspora movement, these nicknames act as indices of broader cultural histories of social positioning and migration.

Din/Resonance In Blue is a sculpture that evokes sonic memories associated with bereavement. The work features a triptych of Bailey’s mother’s passport photos, overlaid with the lyrics of Amazing Grace—a common hymn in Caribbean funeral traditions written by John Newton, an English slave trader turned abolitionist. The trio of passport photos, typically part of a quartet, was found incomplete among Bailey’s mother’s belongings, underscoring an intimacy that escapes formal inquiries. 

Exploring cultural memory and familial bonds, Graham’s talking heads and Bailey’s close-up portraits of her mother resonate with the continuities and dissonances that define the diasporic experience. Both works embody the interplay of personal and collective memory, gripping against the velocity of forgetting.