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The Sproxton Memorial Award 2006 |
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The Sproxton Memorial Award 2006
Awarded to Penny Klepuszewska for her work entitled 'Living Arrangements' 2006 MA Photography London College of Communication
Judged by Trish Morrissey (photographer) and Brett Rogers (director of the Photographer's Gallery, London)
The award is in the name of Andrew Sproxton, the late husband of Professor Val Williams. Together they founded the Impressions Gallery in York at a time when there were only two photography galleries in the whole country (Impressions and the Photographer's Gallery, London).
Penny Klepuszewska says.. "Intrinsic to my work are the details and scenes, the fragilities and brutalities of contemporary human existence, both actual and fictitious. These ‘photographic worlds’ combine a documentary approach with staging and construction. They are accounts of the real world but also self-contained fictions that often incorporate slightly obscured personal experiences or found occurrences taken from newspaper articles, stories, conversations or everyday life.
My interest lies within the visual investigation of people’s lives and situations. I am drawn to the 'small' daily happenings and ‘non’ happenings, exploring the routines that often go unnotice or are overlooked. I gather these small pellets of information in an attempt to create work that makes a comment, informs or questions our lives in some way. I am interested in how people manage in life. I tend to be very natural when working with and around people, allowing them to find their own way in the creative process and taking my own steps forward from there. In my work I prefer to take time to develop a working relationship with whom I am photographing.
The starting point for my final MA project, entitled Living Arrangements, was a recent report by the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service which suggested that one in ten elderly people living alone do not see a single person on an average day. This is in stark contrast to the twenty or more people on average that the younger generation.
It has become clear that the patterns of family life have changed significantly over the last two decades and this has created a large and expanding number of elderly people who are living alone, often with deteriorating health and no family support to hand. The home is often regarded as a place of shelter but for some in later life it can become a place of inescapable isolation.
“For many elderly people their only daily human contact, if any, may be the person who is sent to get them up in the morning, prepare their food and put them to bed at night. Being cared for at home rather than in hospital or residential care when we become old and frail is, apparently, what most of us want. In line with Government policy over the last decade, elderly people who get state-funded homecare are those with relatively high levels of need and it's both means-tested and rationed according to strict ‘eligibility’ criteria. Increasingly, the elderly are left on their own”.
My intention was to produce a body of work that combines both visual and sound elements, in an attempt to consider some of the issues that surround life in old age, such as bereavement, living alone, confinement to the house and waiting for the 'different person everyday' homecare to arrive. Initial ideas for this work have been focussed around patterns of sleeping and waking, the activities of daily living, an expectation of 'no visitors' and an exploration of being 'inside' as opposed to being 'outside'. The periods of time in between the arrival of the homecare visits have been the predominant feature in the development of this work. The waiting times, the periods of isolation and the time spent in recollection of the past.
These small visual ‘plays’ will hopefully offer open narratives upon which the viewer can reflect.
1 Women’s Royal Voluntary Service, 2005 http://www.wrvs.org.uk
2 Contact the Elderly, 2005 http://www.contact-the-elderly.org |
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