Exile and Return Exhibition

Exile and Return – A group exhibition commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Bailiwick of Guernsey from Nazi occupation.

Last Autumn I was asked by the local artist, Rosanne Guille, if I would take part in an art project to commemorate the liberation of the Bailiwick of Guernsey from the Nazi Occupation. 2025 was the 80th anniversary year, and the idea had been suggested to her by Rev’d Dr Adrian Datta. Adrian wanted to celebrate the event in a memorable way at St Pierre du Bois Church.

Rosanne Guille and Rev’d Dr. Adrian Datta

Adrian said:

“The 80th Liberation Day Celebration is hugely significant in the life of the Bailiwick.   Sadly, but inevitably, there are fewer and fewer people around who lived through the Occupation years either here or overseas. Those who are, are in the autumn of their lives and it is correct and right that their experiences should be honoured, remembered and marked in a very special and clear way.   The Occupation Arts Collective allows this to be done through the medium of the visual arts. It will leave a permanent legacy of this occasion.

This diverse exhibition will represent a number of distinct responses and interpretations of the experience of exile and return and will be open for six weeks based at the parish church of St Pierre du Bois and also in the Rectory Fellowship rooms.

This project is rooted, grounded and shaped in and by the community.   It will enhance and facilitate community engagement and involvement including schools and other interest groups.   A number of artists’ talks and workshops will be scheduled during the exhibition period providing insight to the creative process and honouring the historicity of this subject.”

Taking part was not a difficult decision to make.  I had grown up hearing stories of this harsh period of local history. My Mum’s family were either evacuated from Guernsey at the outset of the war, or lived through the occupation on the Island.

It was not just this that resonated though; it felt like what was occurring in 2024, with the rise of nationalism, far-right authoritarianism and other forms of conflict across the world, it was an important anniversary to remember. The extremes of warfare, displacement and the horrifying culmination - the death camps of Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Aktion T4 during WWII were the product of far right ideology; something that all societies should never forget in order to prevent fascism from ever taking control again.

As a landscape painter, I knew that to make meaningful work, I needed to start by considering the impact of the Occupation on both the natural world and on individuals and our communities. Landscape art today is wide ranging and includes a broad spectrum of approaches and views. It can be used to consider cultural, social and economic development, environmental degradation, urbanisation, displacement and warfare. For me, it is a means of exploring the human condition and our place in the world, alongside these issues and concerns. Painting especially, is a potent carrier of memory and identity, as well as a conveyor of emotions such as loss, joy, hope and of the act of memorialisation. By documenting the sites that carry the scars and reminders of the Occupation of the Islands, I hoped to tap into the lives that had gone before, the personal and collective memories of islanders, and the untold histories and human existences, in order to connect with people now.

The relationship we have with the environment we are born into, shapes our understanding of the world and creates a sense of community and shared identity. Our collective living gives us a sense of place as a location filled with meaning. In The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History, Edward S Casey states “To be at all—to exist in any way—is to be somewhere, and to be somewhere is to be in some kind of place. Place is as requisite as the air we breathe, the ground on which we stand, the bodies we have. We are surrounded by places. We walk over and through them. We live in places, relate to others in them, die in them. Nothing we do is unplaced. How could it be otherwise?”

‘Place’ means more than our physical connection to the land. It is also the meaning we assign to it as part of our individual and community identity – both in terms of the historical, the here and now, and how we wish to imagine it for others in the future.

To do justice to this project, I felt I needed to understand the history of this period more than the little I knew from the stories my Gran had told me, snippets of contemporary history from junior school, or the fragments my Mum remembered about the war years (she had returned to Guernsey aged 7 having been evacuated to Burnley with brother, cousins, and my Gran). To learn more, I first visited the Priaulx Library, a rich source of local history. It was also suggested that I visit the Bailiwick archives, where a huge amount of documentation of the second world war is stored.

Here I found my Great-grandparents’ identity cards that they were given during the Occupation - all islanders had to carry them on their person. I also found out a great deal more, including records of all the workers that were brought to the islands to build the fortifications.

My Great-Grandparents’ Registration Forms with the German Forces in Guernsey during the Occupation. Courtesy of the Bailiwick Archives.

I normally start a new art project by walking, sitting and drawing in a specific site. Guernsey is strewn with concrete buildings from German Occupation. The authorities here have lost count of the number of bunkers there are in the Island, but there are over 1,000. I started by drawing around the coast, at some of the coastal defences. I like the fact that nature has defiantly taken over many of the bunkers, with ancient gorse bushes shrouding many of the sites on L’Ancresse common. Others such as Fort Hommet and Mirus Battery are maintained as tourist and educational sites.

A few of these drawings and plein air sketches are posted below.

Over the next few months, these were worked up into larger paintings back in the studio (below).

I have put together a second area of work connected to this exhibition, which I will cover in the next part of my blog soon. This relates to Organisation Todt and the workers who created the fortifications in the Channel Islands.

I also hope to cover some of the other artist’s work included in the exhibition in the coming weeks.

Exile and Return Exhibition runs until 26th June, and is open Thursday 8th May from 10am to 4pm, plus weekends 10am to 4pm. It can also be seen during weekdays - contact Rosanne Guille for appointments on 07781 122385.

À la perchôine!