SONJA ANDREW
United Kingdom
1968
THE TIES THAT BIND II. 2008
Digitally printed and screen printed textiles with heat transfer print, flocking and stitch. Cotton. 3 x (180 x 75 cm)
When I married, my grandmother placed a note in our wedding gift, “may the path together trod be a pilgrimage with God”. These few simple words communicated her beliefs and those of her ancestors, and her hope that we would continue in the ‘path of faith’ that characterised her family’s approach to life.
My own sense of personal and cultural identity is shaped not only by my life experiences but also by hers. Her father (my great grandfather) was a Quaker and conscientious objector in World War I and was imprisoned for refusing to fight. My grandmother’s family moved home due to abuse by neighbours and those who had been friends – graffiti and crosses were scrawled on the door of their home to single them out in the community. As his health deteriorated in prison, my great grandfather finally agreed to take part in the non-combatant service in the last year of the war, but the physical and mental scars of his prison experiences stayed with him and his family for many years. There was much lingering resentment towards conscientious objectors and their families in the post war period. My great grandfather could no longer work as a skilled engineer and had great difficulty getting employment as no one wanted to work with a ‘conchie’. The crosses on their home also continued to single them out in their new community, where so many men had been lost to war. By World War II my grandmother had married and my father was born. Her husband was in a reserved occupation and again she faced social condemnation from the surrounding community, as both her father and her husband had not fought.
This installation reflects on these experiences and attempts to communicate the consequences of my great grandfather’s beliefs for both himself and his immediate family. The narrative sequence of the panels is based on the family at the start of the war, my great grandfather’s imprisonment as a conscientious objector, and the continued hostility towards conscientious objectors and their families that continued into World War II and beyond. This work was exhibited in the UK in 2008 without a content description in order to research the range of meanings that viewers derived from the work and the cultural and personal histories and experiences that informed their readings of the textiles.
