The Hyman Collection includes this important installation, consisting of imagery and sound. Made in collaboration with curator Val Williams, The Village (1993) uses photographs, slide projections and a sound track to look at domestic life in a rural community in West Sussex. In the exhibition Cockroach Diaries and Other Stories, Impressions Gallery, Bradford (2008 and tour) this 'room' was at the centre of the exhibition.
At Impressions, this body of work was presented in a specially made room, re-created as an installation for the first time in fifteen years, using obsolete projection equipment and the original slides. On the outside of the darkened box are a series of black and white photographs. These depict gardens, photographed secretly through hedges and fences, as if they are settings for the next village drama. Inside the projection box, larger than life size colour projections display such events as family weddings, fêtes and women's domestic lives. A surround soundtrack whispers secrets revealed in interviews with women from the village.
As Anna Fox explains: "I wanted to spend time investigating the realities (which I felt were hidden) lying behind the façade of the typical English picture postcard village."
