Artcore gallery, Derby UK

Nov 2022 – Jan 2022

Introduction

This project looks at our connections of home, heritage and belonging through shared memories of nurturing plants, from flowers to fruit and vegetables. How shared experiences, of giving connect people from different continents and keep alive the memories of those separated.

Through interviews in Coventry and Derby, as part of my Artcore residency I have collected personal stories that show a connection through the domestic growth of plants, trees to the gifting of fruit and vegetables.

This project has been developed through my own interest in how my family and those of a similar background; second generation child/children with parents from of another country have stories of their links to farming and how the gifting or bringing over of food and plants create relationships with distant relatives*. My mother is the daughter of a farmer, her relationship in helping and growing crop, to the fresh produce eaten as part of her childhood have travelled from India to the UK. Growing of mangos’, mints, garlic, and onions to her love of flowers is her way of keeping the memories of her childhood alive. These domesticated stories are unwritten pieces of history that are fragile, and fleeting, have been retold to me.

*Bringing over foreign plants, seeds and foods is discouraged due to serious affects it can have on the native plants and vegetation of that country.

This subject also leads to questions of how migrants in settled in post-war Britain, from the former commonwealth; housed in the urban cities and towns, due to the need of work and resources. Their previous lives and their connection to the countryside displaced.  Fruit and vegetables from their home countries were seen as luxuries and gave fond memories of places, practices and people left behind.

My work looks at this separation, and how oral history of places give us connection, this exhibition is a mix of media presentation of work. Tarla’s blog for this residency can be found here: https://artcoreuk.com/category/residency/partition-parables/tarla-patel/

Evolution

The progress of this project has come through the stories that people have told me on their relationship with the Seeds to Home project. What was originally an idea of how we are connected even by separation through distance of another country, changed to include how we are connected to people we have lost and our own consciousness in how we see the relation between nature and our own selves.

Through the Artcore residency I have met two groups, one is the art group at the Charnwood St location and the Sahahra group at the Derby Arboretum. In Coventry I was able to speak to the Foleshill Creates group. Through discussions, I was able to record short audio pieces that have directly developed my work. Some of these stories will be available at the exhibition, it gives the audience personal stories to reflect upon, chance encounters, trust, loss, and remembrance. How our actions of growing and nurturing plants, is a physical act of remembering our heritage or loved one.  Through the act of giving we are continuing the legacy and traditions given to us.

Reflections on how we remember:

I transcribed the audio stories collected and placed small sections of dialogue into an Artificial Intelligence software application called Dall-e. Dall-e takes text-based descriptions and creates an image. Some of the text I used from the transcripts include:

‘My family’s Jamaican grandparents in the summer, my friend’s dad would always bring up box every day.’

‘I started growing vegetables that that connection to the earth and that connection to growing food in particular. Just feels like part of my heritage and part of my identity.’

These images are to me, are impressions of memories. These images are imperfect, AI generated artwork is still in development and the images created use algorithms that access millions if not billions of images and reference points. The images generated are unfinished, unpolished, they blur or look out of place. But if you squint and don’t look to closely, they have a realistic quality. In relation to our memories becoming less detailed the older we get, correlates to the imperfection of these images from the Dall-e app.