Debbie Barber & Jules Turner

About, written by Ric Mann

They ask one another, “Can we talk together, can I support you, can I support your understanding alongside my own?”This is not a metaphoric question, it concerns fired plinths and printed photographs, and they will demonstrate how one supports the other. And this is not something abstract. It is conducted in terms of the presence and absence of the objects of memory.

Debbie's work references a partially forgotten domestic space. The substance of the artefacts is white-fired clay and there is evidence of the imprint of tea towels on their surface. Like small mantelpieces, they invite the display of treasures. Debbie has some of her own. They are the ephemeral spinoffs of pot making, the undervalued excess of truly being there, at that time, at the time of the making. But why the fragments and not the pot itself? Because the paradigm here is not to carry the entire weight of the past into the present but only the otherwise forgotten fragments, the small remnants that mightbe overwritten by the weight of narrative. 

Jules' work references a domestic space, a yearning. Not the people there but some small record of being with them. In themselves her photos are unsupported, the inked paper needs a place to be displayed, somewhere to ground them in the face of their absent referent. The moment in which each view was captured is long done, nothing remains of this collation of time or place. Yet here they are, now and present, infused with everything that motivated their assemblage.

“I can’t show you what I saw there, I can't show you the value of my whole experience,” they say. And, as with the telling of any story, there are the pauses, a catching of breath, an unspoken thought. For Jules and Debbie, these are the real treasures, and this is what they share.

Artist Bios

UK born Jules Turner came to Aotearoa in 1991. She continued her Art education with a Diploma in Secondary Teaching. Turner has worked with young people ever since, inspiring and motivating them to become lifelong learners. A Masters with Honors from AUT University developed Turners’ art practice as she specialised in the Haptic (the sense of touch) for her Masters project using photography as a medium. Photography and Performance have been the disciplines of choice for Turner and she has performed and exhibited her work in a variety of venues and public spaces in Tamaki Makaurau - Auckland. In 2017 Turner completed a Teach NZ Sabbatical research project that involved creating a resource to share with students and teachers who are involved in Scholarship Visual Art. Since 2019 Turner has become a determined animal rights activist and regularly outreaches in Tamaki Makaurau – Auckland where she also lives and works as HOD Art at a South Auckland School.

Visit Jules' Website