CARÔ GERVAY
I started my professional artistic career through building my first darkroom in the cellar of the pub where I was working when I moved to London in the 2000s. Since then I have been working continuously and collectively through my photographic practice.
I explore photography as a performative and relational process that produces new spaces of reflection and potential for critical action in the UK, France, Vietnam. Through experimentations of 'writing, drawing and painting with light', this process inquires into and challenges the roles played by the photographic medium in participating in underlying structural violence. My practice has developed in relation to those themes and is informed by the histories of colonialism, personal stories and present socio-political contexts and concerns. I am particularly interested in collectively reframing and responding to the cultural ruptures affecting diaspora communities, in my case as a French woman of Vietnamese heritage who migrated to the UK.
I am co-director at Gate Darkroom, a community darkroom welcoming all who wish to engage with black & white and alternative photographic processes in a communal and supportive environment; facilitator at Fotosynthesis (participatory photography); associate artist of Asia-Art-Activism research network (AAA).
June 2022- June 2023
Currently taking part in the Trace Mentorship program: https://thetracementorship.co.uk/
September 16th-October 2nd 2022 [ this-place-meant ]
-Collective photographic exhibition by the Gate Darkroom, Thames-Side-Studios, curator Sarah Ainslie.
Autumn 2022
-Publication of my text and photographs in Asia Art Activism research network book: Who is Chúng Ta? Inside rooms that transform: vocal photography and fried déjà-vus.
Autumn 2021 Collaboration with Care for Curatorial Collective Practices, collective actively destabilising and decentralising the individualised narratives around the South East and East Asian (SEEA) Diaspora inside and outside of Asia through their practice
-Commissioned by ESEA hub to create a photographic dialog on entering the public space as an Asian woman.
July 2021
-Shortlisted for Jerwood/Photoworks photography prize.
June 2021
-Deliver Reframes for Encounter Bow festival (ACE), Chisenhale Dance Space, curator Moi Tran. Collaboration with Vietnamese diasporic women across photography, psychology, linguistics.
Nov 2020
-Creation of text-photo-collage on loneliness and communicating with ancestors through photographs, AAA online festival Till We Meet Again.
2020
-I embody photographic memory in Enterre Moi mon Amour, a play about support networks and migration, Theatre Paris Villette, France. 19 performances.
2019
-12 week pinhole project, Vietnamese Mental Health Services (Lottery Fund), Light Conversations exhibition participant-led celebration of 30 years of the charity.
-Radio commission with AAA, How does the printed photographic image sit in our heart today? How do human voices reactivate it? When does it connect us to each other and when does it divide us?
2019
-Collaborated and exhibited with artist Martin Brockman, responding to actions around preserving and commoning the land, Claylands, BlackShed Gallery, Robertsbridge.
2018
-Received an ASEFMobilityFund grant to further my photo-enquiry of the public space, Playtime festival, HCMC, Vietnam.
-Became an associate at Asia-Art-Activism, produced photo-investigations around memory and Vietnamese migration.
-Exhibited Appearing Act -Viết đi, Viết lại- (Write-Rewrite), Thames-Side-Studios, London, enabling my vision as an author to materialise.
-Published in Indigo Magazine (photo and text) 3 women on intergenerational trauma and agency in portraiture.
2017
-Became a director of the Gate Darkroom, enabling me to pursue collective organising and connect with the history of UK community darkrooms.
2016
-Performed and exhibited in Collective Traces, curator Sarah Ainslie, first Gate exhibition, UrbanPhoto Festival, Goldsmiths.
2015
-Became a member of the Gate Darkroom community and started working with Fotosynthesis (participatory organisation).
EXHIBITIONS
10/2019 Gate Darkroom collective show, Thingness, Deptford X festival, Deptford Lounge, London
06/2019-07/2019 Claylands, duo exhibition with artist Martin Brockman, BlackShed Gallery, Robertsbridge, UK
06/2019 Chúng Ta, (Summer Rolls play) Park Theatre, Finsbury Park, London, UK.
06/2019 Double Take, group exhibition at the Gate Darkroom, as part of the Open Studio weekend at Thames Side Studios, Woolwich, UK
05/04/2019 Resettled Spaces, Examining the Home. Group show. Lien Viet Housing Association, Finsbury Park, London
09/2018 Appearing Act -Viết đi, Viết lại- (Write, Rewrite), solo show, Thames-Side-Studios Unit 0 Lounge, Woolwich, London, UK
06/2018 Light Touch, group exhibition at the Gate Darkroom, as part of the Open Studio weekend at Thames Side Studios, Woolwich, UK
11/2017 No Maps for What We Know, Gate Darkroom photography group show at Urban Photo Fest, Goldsmiths University, London, UK
08/10/2017 Appearing Act and Chúng Ta at the Albany, part of the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, London, UK
07/10/2017 Appearing Act and Chúng Ta at Vietnam Now, The Hive, London, UK
01/10/2017 Appearing Act at Vietnam Now, Foyer Vietnam, Paris, France
03/2017 Duo exhibition with Fosca Democrito, Reunion. Part of "Lights in the Storm”, CRAC Lamezia Terme, Italy
04/11/2016 Collective Traces, Gate Darkroom group exhibition by 7 members of the Gate Darkroom, Urban Photo Festival, Goldsmiths, Tate, London, UK
09/2016 Feeding the Millions, paintings by Xanthe Mosley, photography by Caroline Gervay, poems by Rachel Long, Rich Mix, London, UK
08/2015 Mix media Group exhibition, 42 curated by Harry Pye
03/10/2014 Mix media Group exhibition, Elefest. Jolie Laide, curated by Harry Pye, Hotel Elephant, London, UK
11/-2012 Mix media Group exhibition, I Remember, curated by Harry Pye, A-side B-side Gallery, Hackney, London
05/2011 Exploding cinema at the Others, Stoke Newington, London Epiphanique-Ondée
10/2010 SW1 Gallery, 12 Cardinal Walk, London, Print sale.
09/2010 Ninos consentidos Festival Epiphanique-Ondée, Cova de les Cultures, Barcelona, Spain
09/2010 Epiphanique-Ondée as part of the Ultra Motion/Anti-Static exhibition, ToandFor Gallery, Holloway, London, UK
RESIDENCIES
06/01/20-21/01/20 Residency for the play EMMA at Théâtre Paris Villette
27/10/18-21/12/18 Residency at Raven Row with Asia-Art-Activism Research Network, London, UK. Looking at Vietnamese community space in London and space transformation through art making and experimental photography.
02/2019-03/2019 Residency for the play EMMA at Théâtre de l’Escabeau, Briare, and Théâtre des Quartiers d'Ivry, France
01/2018 Residency for the play EMMA at Théâtre Paris Villette, Le Grand Parquet, Paris, France
11/2017 Residency for the play EMMA at Théâtre des Quartiers d'Ivry, France
12/2016 Residency for the play EMMA at Espace 1789 St Ouen, France
04/2015 Chula Residency in Hoi An, Vietnam
BURSARIES
07/2018 Mobility First travel grant from ASEF to take part in :Playtime festival in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, An Ordinary City
02/2016 Phakama Bursary: pilot project Of All People with theatre maker Kate Beales, Gate darkroom, Deptford X, London, UK
PERFORMANCE
03/20 EMMA, théâtre Paris Villette, Paris
03-04/10 Enterre Moi Mon Amour_theatre performance at Carreau du Temple, Paris, France
27/01/2017 Live Friday "Linguamania" at Asmolean Museum, Oxford with Pegasus Theatre, UK
04/11/2016 Collective Traces, Gate Darkroom group exhibition by 7 members of the Gate Darkroom
PUBLICATIONS
My work features in the following:
Catalogue for exhibition Resettled Spaces, Examining the Home
Article published in Indigo Magazine, 3 women, looking at the representation of Asian women in family archives.
Clay in Common, Julia Rowntree and Duncan Hooson, Triarchy Press
Playing for Time, Making Art as if the World Mattered by Lucy Neal, OBE; Oberon Books
Catalogue for exhibition Feeding the Millions
Catalogue for exhibition Claycargo
COLLECTIVE PROJECTS
06/2018 Becomes associate of Asia-Art-Activism Research Network
2018 Becomes part of the collective FemmesPHOTOgraphes
03/2018-2019 R&D in Paris with youth organisation Phakama, part of London, Paris, Athens Refugee Network research project, Queen Mary University, London, UK
05/2017 Becomes co-director at the Gate Darkroom, Thames-Side Studios, Woolwich, UK
08/2017 Takes part in Dis/orient workshop, screening and talks, Berlin, Germany
08/11/2016 Of All People participatory project with story teller Kate Beales, Urban Photo Festival, the Gate Darkroom, London, UK
07-09/2016 Co facilitation and curation at Festival of Choice, Amnesty International, with Sin Fronteras and Fotosynthesis, Latin American Women's Rights Service LAWRS, London, UK
01/2014-03/2018 Fotosynthesis' projects: Literacy and Numeracy through Photography in the primary schools of Lambeth, London, UK
03/2015 Going Back In Time, pinhole camera workshop, Sixspace, Hanoi, Vietnam
2014 Becomes Associate Artist at Phakama UK
02/2013 Co facilitation on photo-therapy group in south London, SELPH with Dr Elinor Hynes