In mid-March, just before lockdown in the UK, Sarah Hickson had been planning a trip to Galway to make new work in collaboration with people from the city who had lived experience of Direct Provision (the system for housing asylum seekers in Ireland). The plan was to pick up the threads of conversations begun last summer exploring the concept of home, journeys of hope, and a sense of belonging. Like so many things in this turbulent year, work on the project was abruptly curtailed by the global pandemic.
In this time of uncertainty, isolation and confinement, our relationship to home - both the physical place and the emotional heart - has become more acute, more poignant. For people making long, perilous journeys to find refuge, who have lived through the trauma and disruption of displacement, home is no longer a place of safety. Constraints are placed on them at every turn, the prolonged separation from family and loved ones is unbearable, and ‘not knowing’ becomes the dominant state of mind. The impact of Coronavirus has exposed deep social inequality and fractured communities, making the situation for those seeking asylum even more challenging.
As the collaborative part of this project is on hold for the moment, Sarah has approached this online exhibition as a digital scrap-book. She has gathered some of the images she showed in last year’s work-in-progress exhibition, and placed them alongside others that spark connections and resonate with themes of confinement and freedom, isolation and belonging.
The presentation starts with photographs taken between 2015 and 2017, portraying the shocking living conditions of informal refugee settlements - from railway stations and abandoned warehouses in Serbia and Northern Greece, to ‘The Jungle’ in Calais. Sarah has re-visited photographs she took in Galway in 2018 and 2019 that reveal new layers of meaning in the context of COVID-19. The final selection of photographs comes from her most recent work - a personal response to lockdown in her local London neighbourhood; a visual meditation that helped her process the days that warped and drifted, evoking feelings of fragility, solitude and anxiety.
Sarah Hickson is a London-based arts and social documentary photographer, working in the UK and internationally. Her work explores themes of belonging, fracture, displacement and community.
This online exhibition refers back to Hickson’s remarkable show Sounds Unseen, presented at GIAF 2018, and her work–in–progress exhibition at GIAF 2019.
View Exhibition
<p><strong>Dilapidated buildings on railway wasteland offer little protection from the Serbian winter </strong><br />Central train station, Belgrade, Serbia 2017</p>
<p><strong>Tents and flimsy shelters hug the railway tracks</strong><br />Idomeni, Northern Greece 2016</p>
<p><strong>We borrow the hearts of nomadic birds</strong><br />The ‘Jungle’ refugee camp, Calais, France 2015</p>
<p><strong>And no one shall make them afraid</strong><br />The ‘Jungle’ refugee camp, Calais, France 2016</p>
<p><strong>Refugees burning toxic rubbish to keep warm in a derelict railway warehouse</strong><br />Central train station, Belgrade, Serbia 2017</p>
<p><strong>Refugees living rough in derelict railway warehouses (I)</strong><br />Central train station, Belgrade, Serbia 2017</p>
<p><strong>Preparing food (I)</strong><br />The ‘Jungle’ refugee camp, Calais, France 2015</p>
<p><strong>Georgina a young woman from Zimbabwe</strong><br />Salthill, Galway 2019</p>
<p><strong>Georgina backstage at the Heineken Big Top</strong><br />Galway International Arts Festival 2019</p>
<p><strong>Hunched figure</strong><br />London Bridge Station SE1, March 2020</p>
<p><strong>At the window (I)</strong><br />Bermondsey, London SE1, April 2020</p>
<p><strong>At the window (II)</strong><br />Bermondsey, London SE1, April 2020</p>
<p><strong>Confined (III)</strong><br />London Bridge, SE1, April 2020</p>
<p><strong>Take me home baby</strong><br />Bermondsey, London SE1, April 2020</p>
<p><strong>Solitude (II)</strong><br />Monument, London SE1, May 2020</p>
<p><strong>Hanging in there</strong><br />River Thames, Bankside Pier, London SE1, June 2020</p>
<p><strong>Solitude (III)</strong><br />River Thames, Bankside, London SE1, June 2020</p>
<p><strong>J'existe</strong><br />Borough, London SE1, April 2020</p>
About Sarah Hickson
Sarah Hickson is a London-based arts and social documentary photographer, working in the UK and internationally. Her work explores themes of belonging, fracture, displacement and community. It’s often the frayed edges of a story that draw her attention, where threads from the past unravel in the present, and where vulnerability resides alongside hope and resilience. Sarah is passionate about live performance, creative process, and the power of the arts to move, challenge and change us. She collaborates with organisations focusing on humanitarian and social issues, as well as with artists, festivals and cultural institutions. Visit Sarah Hickson's website.
Recent Work
Something has Already Happened is the result of an artistic residency in Kolkata, India, hosted by the British Council and the National Centre for Writing in 2018. The essay gathers fragments of visual drama that play out on the streets of this multi-layered city, where the past and the present collide.
The Fragile Oasis explores the impact of environmental and cultural change on the small oasis town of M’Hamid el Ghizlane on the edge of the Sahara Desert in South Morocco.
Life in the Time of Corona is a series of images Sarah made during lockdown in London - a personal response to the pandemic and a barometer for her own state of mind as she wandered the depopulated streets of her local neighbourhood.
Coming in 2021
This online exhibition looks forward to a new body of work which Sarah Hickson is creating for GIAF 2021 in collaboration with people who have experienced, or are living in, Direct Provision in Galway.
