Talking About Family Album: Deanna Dikeman and Jamie Dormer-Durling on Grief, Memory and Home
What comes to mind when you hear the word home? And what about grief? Both may feel heavy with memories of people, places or versions of ourselves that no longer exist.
Grief and home are close companions in Family Album, an exhibition that traces quiet shifts in family life over time. From growing up to growing older, or looking back on the place and people that shaped you, the exhibition reveals what curator Jamie Dormer-Durling describes as ‘grief in motion’.
Family Album, part of Good Grief Weston, brings together photography from Deanna Dikeman and Colin Pantall alongside the poetry of John Hegley. Together these works explore how we hold on to the people and places we love through life’s inevitable changes.
As we ‘flip’ to the first page of the album, we encounter Dikeman’s Leaving and Waving, a twenty-seven-year project in which she photographed her parents waving goodbye from their driveway in Sioux City, Iowa, each time she drove away. Across the pond, Colin Pantall offers a tender portrait of his young daughter Isabel on their well-loved family sofa, captured as she played, slept and recovered from illness. The next ‘page’ of our album turns musical, with John Hegley’s Family Favourites transporting us to his childhood bungalow in Luton through poetry and song.
In his 1985 book America, Andy Warhol wrote, “your own life while it’s happening never has any atmosphere until it’s a memory.” Dikeman mentions this quote when speaking about her work. Although she doesn’t fully agree that her life lacked atmosphere, she understands what Warhol is getting at. After each visit home, her parents would walk her outside and stand in the driveway, watching as she backed out, honked twice and drove away. This ritual long predated the camera, which joined them in 1991. She described the feeling of being torn, wanting to remain close to her beloved parents while also wanting to pursue a life of her own. Years of leaving and waving passed before Dikeman saw a thread forming through the images. By 2017, the project had reached its end with 93 goodbyes. She takes pleasure in knowing that these photographs have travelled around the world, giving others the chance to ‘meet’ her parents.
All three artists weave their own families into a beautiful exhibition where each piece feels in conversation with the others. Dormer-Durling notes how each artist worked with a distinct ‘stage’: Dikeman’s family driveway, Pantall’s family sofa and Hegley’s childhood bungalow. By capturing life in such intimate and well-loved settings, we’re given a glimpse into the mundane beauty of family life. Dormer‑Durling is especially drawn to how each work captures ‘the good stuff’: the small, everyday moments that linger. He often listens to Hegley’s album while doing the dishes or tidying the house. One twelve‑second poem ‘Mum & Dad’ has stayed with him. Hegley recites: ‘Mum and dad, did I ever tell you how glad I am to have you? Didn’t I? Why? I must be dumb, or mad’.
Family Album weaves together the words and images of home in a way that invites you to think about your own rituals around goodbyes and growing older. What do we choose to capture? How do we want to remember the good stuff?
For an exhibition that will have you reminiscing about rooms you grew up in, the people you were sad to leave and the music that carried you through, join us at The Common Room on 18 October.
Written by Anna Dempsey
Exhibition opens: 18 October at 5:30pm in The Common Room
Colin Pantall & Deanna Dikeman in conversation: 7pm at Front Room Theatre
John Hegley ‘Family Favorites’: 8:30pm-9:45pm at Front Room Theatre
Please note: The Common Room is not wheelchair accessible, but the Front Room Theatre is wheelchair accessible.
You can still visit the exhibition after Good Grief Weston at The Common Room until Wednesday 18 November, open Thurs-Sunday – keep an eye on their Instagram for specific times.
