Heartsstone

2 Channel HD video, 26 minutes. 2017

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With times passage our earliest of childhood memories become so distant the visual detail of what we try to recall loses its clarity. Edges become increasingly blurred. 

Sometimes when trying to visualise a loved one whom passed long ago, it feels as if the detail of their physicality is most pronounced around the periphery, and from here inwards things become more obscure. A silhouette the only discernible image we can recall. 

Without finding that definition, that persons smile, their aged ears and worn hands, sometimes through our searching we instead find they're presence within ourselves. Tucked away in a remote corner. Possibly one of many a heartsstone.

Their presence becomes an embrace, and within that we receive a solace of sorts.

 

Jacobus’s Grandfather Vincenzo Capone was born in Fremantle in 1910, and when 3 years old emigrated back to Capo D’ Orlando with his parents, to their homeland. By 13 he travelled back to Fremantle by ship where he spent the remainder of his life working as a fisherman. Saving enough money early on to relocate his parents and siblings back to Fremantle. He was a loving father and grandfather and one of the founding member of the Fremantle Fishing Co-operative.

The waters of Cockburn sound were his, his fathers and grandfathers fishing grounds, to which Heartsstone faces directly out towards from its instalment in the j-shed.

In the unfolding video Vincenzo’s grandson kneels on the shoreline facing where his grandfathers last fishing vessel “Buffalo” is now moored on the Swan River in North Fremantle. 

As the tide slowly recedes away from the shore, stooped and in a position of ignominy, jacobus's gesture is but one of simple and silent reverence.

 

 

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This project was commissioned for Fremantle's inaugural HIgh Tide Biennale 2017

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