THURS 27 JULY / 6–8PM / OPEN EYE GALLERY
FREE, REGISTER HERE
Join us for the launch of Vestige, a collaboration between poet Pauline Rowe and photographer AJ Wilkinson. Vestige is a unique and beautiful pamphlet that brings together images that reflect profound moments of loss. Together these poems and images provoke responses and ideas about the way life is transformed when a relationship ends, and the grief caused by this loss changes ways of seeing home and relationships.
The photograph, which expresses non-being through its perception of chance, is also—and
it is also unique in this—what puts us in the unmediated presence of beings other than ourselves:
in the presence of their presence.
– From Poetry and Photography, Yves Bonnefoy. Translated by Chris Turner
Vestige is a collaboration between photographer, AJ Wilkinson, and poet and writer, Pauline Rowe. AJ & Pauline started working together in 2015. It was first conceived as a multimedia exhibition curated by Thomas Dukes at the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool. Initially titled, Sleeping in the Middle, the exhibition included AJ’s photographs taken during a period when his long-term relationship of 25 years was coming to an end and voice recordings of poems written by Pauline in response to these images.
Vestige is a continuation of this special collaborative process and continues the response to autobiographical experiences between photographer and poet.
The evening will include readings, followed by Q&A with writer and critic Laura Robertson, and music by Julia Rowe.
I forget every kiss we shared. Surely there were so few.
I forget often that I never loved you. Never held you like a vow between stone,
never stayed in the dark awake for you. The memory of you takes so little from me.
It’s as small as a peppercorn. How little I desired you.
How rarely I remember. How infinitesimal, the pain
“Vestige is a book of shadows, ghosts, lingering presences and past feelings that resist forgetting. The force of the work pushes, like light, through the gaps between word and image, reminding us that fractured meanings create their own kind of truth. The voices of Blake and Dickinson add to the dream-like clarity of A.J. Wilkinson’s photographs and Rowe’s poems take complete control of our senses; synaptic, aphoristic and imagistic: a testament to poetry’s power in transforming the unsayable into the unforgettable.” – Chris McCabe, Director of the National Poetry Library.
Pauline Rowe has two recent pamphlets with Maytree Press: The Ghost Hospital was shortlisted in 2020 for a Saboteur Award in the best poetry pamphlet category: The Weight of Snow won the award in 2021. Pauline is Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Chester. She was the first writer-in-residence at Open Eye Gallery (2016 ¬– 2019) and first poet-in-residence at Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust (2013 – 2020). She is writer-in-residence with The People of Anfield Project (Open Eye Gallery/Culture Liverpool) working with photographer Emma Case until 2025. She is interested in social engagement and interdisciplinary artistic practice and works collaboratively with photographic artists. She lives in Liverpool.
A J Wilkinson works both independently and collaboratively as a photographic artist. His work explores his own history and autobiography through people and places. English Candies (1995) was his first exhibition, shown at the Viewpoint gallery, and then nationally; it was an exploration of the punk movement. In 2004 he collaborated with writer Richard McCann on Driving Blind which was exhibited nationally and published as a book by Dewi Lewis publications. This anti-picturesque work explored the mess and clutter of travel across America. Sleeping in the Middle was shown at Open Eye Gallery in 2018. He studied for an MFA at University of Ulster, where he explored masculinity in the outlaw biker community. AJ’s current work explores homosocial desire, masculine physical connection, and spaces. He lectures at the University of Bolton and lives in Hebden Bridge.
Links:
For further information, interviews: paulinerowewriter@gmail.com
Image credit: AJ Wilkinson
Address:
Open Eye Gallery,
Liverpool, L3 1BP
Open:
10am – 5pm, Tue – Sun
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