Joy Gregory

Exploring the deep, lasting entanglements of British colonial history, memory, and botanical heritage

A project inspired by the notes kept by physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane on a trip to Jamaica in 1687 to collect plants and seeds. Sloane’s collection of artefacts was so vast that, when he bequeathed them to the nation, they formed the basis of the British Museum, the British Library and the Natural History Museum – symbols of Empire and Britain’s dominance.

Since 2002 I have been engaged in a long-term research project focusing on language endangerment and latterly the connection between this and the loss of local knowledge. The first work resulting from this research is a short film entitled Gomera which, focuses on the close relationship between the physical landscape and language. The film will premièred at the 17th Sydney Biennale in May 2010. (Joy Gregory)

Joy Gregory’s film uncovers and probes eleven very different individuals’ desire to be blonde. Asking a set of simple questions, such as why did you choose to be Blonde?, what is your earliest memory of someone Blonde?. This work uses the state of blonde as a way of describing notions of shifting identities.

N|u is a moribund language of the southern Kalahari, spoken by an ever diminishing group of elderly San people scattered across the region. It is also one of the oldest human languages initially declared extinct in 1974 but was sought out by land claim activists in the mid 1990’s. (Joy Gregory)

Exploring the deep, lasting entanglements of British colonial history, memory, and botanical heritage

A project inspired by the notes kept by physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane on a trip to Jamaica in 1687 to collect plants and seeds. Sloane’s collection of artefacts was so vast that, when he bequeathed them to the nation, they formed the basis of the British Museum, the British Library and the Natural History Museum – symbols of Empire and Britain’s dominance.

Since 2002 I have been engaged in a long-term research project focusing on language endangerment and latterly the connection between this and the loss of local knowledge. The first work resulting from this research is a short film entitled Gomera which, focuses on the close relationship between the physical landscape and language. The film will premièred at the 17th Sydney Biennale in May 2010. (Joy Gregory)

Joy Gregory’s film uncovers and probes eleven very different individuals’ desire to be blonde. Asking a set of simple questions, such as why did you choose to be Blonde?, what is your earliest memory of someone Blonde?. This work uses the state of blonde as a way of describing notions of shifting identities.

N|u is a moribund language of the southern Kalahari, spoken by an ever diminishing group of elderly San people scattered across the region. It is also one of the oldest human languages initially declared extinct in 1974 but was sought out by land claim activists in the mid 1990’s. (Joy Gregory)