Lot 299 - Jo de Banzie - Behind them the stars still shined

Silver and collodion on aluminium
2021
A6 (10x15cm)
Original Artwork
Signed on Verso
Curated by Art on a Postcard

About
Jo de Banzie is a photographic artist who employs the materiality of ancient and experimental process to explore memory and place.

With a particular interest in motherhood within the context of war, she uses her own family stories as a starting point to explore themes of nurture and loss. Combining historical research and archive material with oral history and the imagined, Jo creates visual narratives as seen through a female lens. A process-led approach and the use of conceptually relevant materials assist her in visualising the unseen, whilst allowing the necessary space for collaboration with chance and serendipity.

Following a long career as a professional photographer working in commercial and documentary portraiture, Jo took time to rethink her practice with further study at the University of the Arts London, graduating with distinction from the London College of Communication’s Photojournalism & Documentary Photography master’s programme. Her work is held in private and museum collections, including the National Art Library Collection at the V&A.

Education
2017-2018
MA in Photojournalism & Documentary Photography, University of the Arts London (UAL), The London College of Communication

Solo Exhibitions
2019
Hallowed Ground – The London Scottish Regiment, Pimlico, London, UK
2018
Tender – National Gardens Scheme, London, UK

Group Exhibitions
2024 - March 2025
IPE 165 - The Royal Photographic Society, The Museum of Gloucester, UK
IPE 165 - The Royal Photographic Society, Paintworks, Bristol, UK

2023
Hello World - Hive Curates, Broadworks, Liverpool Street, London, UK
A Siren’s Call - AiRM, St Mary in the Marsh, Kent, UK
No Ordinary Love - One Hundred Shoreditch, London, UK
Transmutation - The Margate School, Margate, UK

2022
Open Cells - The Koppel Project, Hampstead, London, UK
Serenity - The Old Bank Vault, Hackney London, UK

2021
RHS Botanical Art & Photography - The Saatchi Gallery, London, UK

2020
Outside In - The Old Bank Vault, Hackney, London, UK

2019
Xhibit – The Koppel Gallery Central, Soho London, UK

2018
Elephants in the Room – LCC Elephant & Castle, London, UK
I the Other – Safe House, Peckham, London, UK

Awards
Fellowship The British Institute of Professional Photographers (BIPP)
Fellowship The Master Photographers Association (MPA)

Public Collections
V&A - National Art Library Collection - London UK

Statement about AOAP Submitted Artwork
Title: Behind them the stars still shined
Medium: Tintype - Silver & Collodion on Aluminium

The work references a quote from In Parenthesis, by the war poet David Jones. Prior to serving with the Royal Welch Fusiliers in WW1, David Jones was a talented artist, and indeed he remained a celebrated painter and engraver. However, the battalion's experience in Mametz Wood in July 1916 later led him to 'make a shape in words' to express his trauma. The lyrical and lacerating shape he made has lodged firmly in my artist's brain, and I carry it with me when making work on war.

The Tintype process utilises a salted collodion emulsion sensitised with silver nitrate, one of the earliest photographic chemistries dating back to the mid-19th century. Collodion, or cellulose nitrate, was traditionally used as both a wound dressing and an explosive, otherwise known as gun cotton, and its use in the making of this work is conceptually relevant.

"Stand-to. Stand-to-arms.
Stealthily, imperceptibly stript back, thinning night wraps unshrouding, unsheafing - and insubstantial barriers dissolve. This blind night-negative yields uncertain flux. At your wrist the phosphorescent dial describes the equal seconds. The flux yields up a measurable body; bleached forms emerge and stand. Where their faces turned, grey wealed earth bared almost of last clung weeds of night weft - behind them the stars still shined."

David Jones, In Parenthesis