Family is an interesting concept if you think about it. You have your blood relatives, who are your direct family, and then you have their spouses who have families of their own. They can differ in size with everyone scattered around the country or congregated in one place. When it comes to my own family, both my parents have three siblings each. Each of those siblings is married with no one having more than four children. Five of my cousins have had children of their own, the highest amount being four again. All the family live relatively close to each other, which after speaking to friends of mine, isn’t actually that common. But what I’m wondering is, why has my family all remained so close to each other. I’ve found that under whatever circumstances, most people always end up back in the area they grew up in, even if they have moved away from it initially. Even my Auntie that doesn’t speak to any of us still lives relatively close.
I have plotted each individual family on their own separate map, plotting the homes that they grew up in, and then their homes with partners and children. I plotted everything over an A – Z Street map of Portsmouth, which shows that the majority of my family are on the same two pages of it. There is only one section of my family who aren’t on this map at all and that is because they live in Southampton, with one of their daughters residing in France with her partner. The reason for them living slightly further afield is because my Uncle used to work in the Prison service and it required them to move around a lot. When he retired, he was living in Southampton and didn’t want to move again.
The arrangements of both current and past houses have begun to look like constellations of stars, and being that I have a very amateur passion for astronomy, this was clearly no accident. I found out from interviewing family members that one of my granddads was also interested in space. I distinctly remember a large poster of his, showing the surface of the moon with the seas and craters and I used to love looking at it as a child. Another thing that I remember was two prints given to my brother by a friend of my Dads. These prints, although not original, were signed by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and I remember wanting them instead of my brother. The prints have luckily been kept, but unfortunately none of my family knows where the moon poster is
This work explores my family, bringing together locations of family homes and family photographs. It has been created through my love of home, and my bewilderment at how we all live so close. I find it strange that my family has ended up in one small area, but I think it is down the closeness of everyone mentally, as well as the size of houses and the familiarity of the area.
