CARÔ GERVAY
Unfinished Books
The series Unfinished Books responds to the exhibition No Place Like Home by connecting narratives encountered through the artist’s engagement with family archives, community organising and colonial contexts in the UK and across the Channel. This body of work is ongoing and collaborative in nature. It reflects on some of the roles played by photography, highlighting the layers of complexity, labour and care required by these diasporic moments and relationships. Namely, this work considers a photographic practice in conversation with: the An Viet archives in Hackney, l’Union Générale des Vietnamiens de France, a 1928 French order that determined the status of mixed-race children, and the London-based Vietnamese women’s group, Reframes.
(re)Appearing Acts, 2010 – ongoing
3 concertina books, giclée prints, watercolour. W13.5 x L19.5 cm (closed) x3
N.B. (re)Appearing Acts is an ongoing body of work exploring Gervay’s family archive and its contexts
Notes from l’Union Générale des Vietnamiens de France (UGVF), a photographic conversation with Nguyen Dac Minh, 2023 – ongoing. Handbound book.
W14.8 x L21 cm
N.B. This conversation focuses on 3 images encountered in the archives of l’Union Générale des Vietnamiens de France (UGVF)
[Re]frames: [tái] định hình, đóng khung [lại], Carô, Hoa, Lili, Diana, Na, Hồng, Mary, Linh, Linda, Mai Anh, Giang, Châu, 2021 – ongoing
Handbound book, hand-printed silver gelatin pinhole print, glassine paper.
W21 x L14.8 cm
N.B. A bunch of London-based Vietnamese women get together. What do we share? How do we celebrate our differences? Which languages do we want to embrace to connect?
No Place Like Home: a metastory by Carô Gervay and Cường Minh Bá Phạm, 2016 – ongoing. Handbound book, annexe printed on recycled paper, glassine envelope.
W18 x L18 cm
N.B. How did we get here? This story is embedded within this exhibition. A heads-up: it involves time travelling, participation and staying with the trouble. There is no chronological order nor conclusion.
We are making this book available online for all to download it, read it and share it:
We recommend 'double page view' for the book experience.
