Artist begins postcard odyssey

An artist embarking on a month-long journey tomorrow (June 5) from Manchester to Algeria will use postcards of where he has been to create an art installation for a special exhibition in 2011.

Dr John Perivolaris will journey from Manchester to Annaba in Algeria, via France, for the exhibition examining attitudes to the former French colony for a project organised by the Universities of Manchester and Durham.

The iPhone application ‘Shoot it!’ will allow him and the people he meets to make and send postcards back to Manchester as he travels to the second largest country in Africa.

The iPhone will also allow him to communicate with correspondents via his blog, http://thecardographer.wordpress.com/, so that online followers can track him and suggest alternative paths for his journey.

The exhibition - at Cornerhouse, Manchester- will be one of the results of a three-year Arts and Humanities Research Council research project, led by Dr Joseph McGonagle from The University of Manchester and Dr Edward Welch from Durham University.

The trip – called ’North to North: A Journey in Postcards from Manchester to the Maghreb’– will be structured around a series of encounters with people connected personally to both France and Algeria and visits to key sites of the Franco-Algerian relationship.

Dr McGonagle said: “The current decade has seen a shift in Algeria’s significance, as it became a favoured diplomatic partner in the American-led ‘War on Terror’, and an increasingly privileged trade partner of the United Kingdom.

“This is thanks undoubtedly to its large reserves of Saharan oil and gas.

’We hope that this commission and the exhibition, along with our wider research project, will generate interest in an important country that largely remains off the radar for many people in the UK.”

Dr Welch said: “North to North will comprise walks and interviews with participants, subsequently uploaded along with images made by John Perivolaris to his blog.

“We hope it will shed some light on how the changing relevance of Algeria to the West is perceived by ordinary people in the UK, France and Algeria."

Documentary and fine art photographer Perivolaris has a background in trans-cultural and visual studies.

He said: "A large proportion of my photographic work is concerned with migrant identities, memory, and the regeneration made possible by the latter."

“On the strength of this work, I was commissioned by the curators of ’New Cartographies: Algeria-France-UK’ to create an original installation exploring the links between the UK, France and Algeria today.

“The resulting project constitutes a natural stage in the development of my long-term artistic interests."