Displaced:Together
A few weeks ago I jumped in the car set out to drive the 3000km from Cork in Ireland to Subotica in Serbia to join some friends who have established The Timber Project, an NGO working at this time in a refugee camp on the Serbian/Hungarian border.
Why I did this is a whole story in and of itself, one i am working away on in the background. There were many reasons to leave but less understanding of what I hoped to achieve. The one thing I knew was that I would document the trip with my sketchbook.
When I made the decision to leave I had only 4 days to get ready so there was very little planning. However, there were two streams of thought running through my head.
- I was inspired by George Butler’s reportage illustration work to draw from life, on location and potentially with the idea of sharing the drawings in some way publicly
- I was also keen to develop the ideas into a visual narrative, potentially with the idea of writing a Joe Sacco-esque comic
While these two themes still remain at the forefront of my mind as of today, as the journey developed the two streams inevitably intertwined and new ones emerged.
The one thing I realised was that the narrative that emerged was more nuanced and subtle than I had envisaged. This makes it more interesting but it also makes it more complicated.
The other question is whether the pictures stand on their own and would benefit from a public exhibition or not.
What will happen with the drawings? Who knows.What I do know is that but while I ponder these questions I thought I’d share them here in the first instance, unedited and in no particular order:
