Olivia McGilchrist: my dear daddy : artist statement : december 2011
The image of the lost parent continually becomes Other until it finally ceases to exist at all; a disturbing
scenario for the child seeking refuge in the scarce relics of said parent’s life.
My Jamaican father, Francois Mc Gilchrist, died twenty four years ago. He was forty two, I was six, yet I have always felt strongly connected to his memory. As his image was starting to fade, I was suddenly required to move back to Jamaica, his home land, (also my birth-land).
Living at ‘Wilmar’, an empty house which lingers with traces of a Jamaican heritage that I am struggling to make my own.
His image has now taken an unprecedented weight in my life which this body of work tries to rationalise through a series of narrative still images, a group of ‘character studies’, (appendix to the narrative) and a short video (editing in progress) which were all created at ‘Wilmar’ over the last six months.
The work completed so far (December 2011) is the first chapter of a larger body of work which will be completed over the next year, as I unravel more and more information about my virtually unknown family.
Appendix 1
Bonsoir Ma Belle!
Et joyeux Noel. Une pensee pour toi. Une pensee pour mon et ton papa.
Tu as reussi a me faire pleurer, Tres peu y sont arrives.
TRES BEAU TRAVAIL.
Bien a toi.
Merci Lydie!
Just Breathtaking Olivia! I also almost have tears falling.
it is as if you are rejoining in this work all that you have been studying, exploring, seeking for the past years, and it is all taking sense, it is all finally coming the way it should be expressed, all together, just BRAVO, these images will stay long time! My God bless you, your father and your family, lots of love.
beautiful. love the project and the process.
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