Wellcome Collection
1 total work
In a time of so much forced exile and displacement, what does it mean to travel? Why are so many of us drawn to the 'elsewhere' when others have no choice and long for home? What changes when we decide to go? And if we spend too long away do we risk losing sight of ourselves?
Lavinia Greenlaw embarks on an absorbing journey from here to elsewhere. These short, evocative chapters draw on her own experience as well as the responses of artists, writers and historical figures to the imperatives of elsewhere - not only in the work they've produced but in how they've chosen to live. She takes a simple act, such as locking the front door as we leave, and uses it to explore our idea of home as a safe place but also what it means when there is no front door or when we know we will never open it again.
With delicate precision she dissects the difference between luggage and baggage, accident and incident, and shows us how much of travel is about staying still. At once intricate and profound, her writing brings familiar detail to new life and in so doing subtly shifts our view of the overwhelming and the unthinkable as well as the routine.
Lavinia Greenlaw embarks on an absorbing journey from here to elsewhere. These short, evocative chapters draw on her own experience as well as the responses of artists, writers and historical figures to the imperatives of elsewhere - not only in the work they've produced but in how they've chosen to live. She takes a simple act, such as locking the front door as we leave, and uses it to explore our idea of home as a safe place but also what it means when there is no front door or when we know we will never open it again.
With delicate precision she dissects the difference between luggage and baggage, accident and incident, and shows us how much of travel is about staying still. At once intricate and profound, her writing brings familiar detail to new life and in so doing subtly shifts our view of the overwhelming and the unthinkable as well as the routine.