Guernsey soil. Madeiran tiles. Autistic chaos.
They might sound like a trio of albums from a local folk music group.
But they are just three of the very different ways artists are exploring island life in a new international exhibition at the Art for Guernsey Gallery, curated by Art for Guernsey.
‘The Channel Islands Contemporary Art Show’ brings together 17 artists from the Channel Islands, Brittany and the UK, with work ranging from painting and photography to sculpture, digital art and installations.
Rather than telling one story, the exhibition offers very different perspectives on the places, people and cultures that shape it.
Express popped down to Mansell Street to speak to three of the artists about the stories behind their work.
Bridget Spinney: looking beneath the soil
For Guernsey artist Bridget Spinney, the story starts beneath our feet.
Her work, ‘Earth Matters’, explores soil, biodiversity and the microscopic world that keeps it alive, with colourful inks made from plants grown in her own garden, in organic soil.
It means the work has become something of a cycle in itself.
“I’m trying to create, in each picture, the sort of cycle, the idea, the story,” she explained.
Look closely and the images move from tiny organisms beneath the soil, through roots and fungi, towards flowers at the surface.
The circular forms are inspired by soil samples in Petri dishes, while the final floral shapes deliberately sit somewhere between reality and imagination.
For Spinney, there is also a serious environmental message beneath the intricate designs, with the work highlighting the importance of nurturing soil and biodiversity and the dangers of relying too heavily on chemicals.
“The more chemicals you put on, the more you kill the stuff at the end of the soil,” she said.
She is also keen that the Channel Islands are not seen simply as a place looking backwards to their artistic past.
“It’s really important here that we’re making contemporary statements in art,” she said.
“We’re not just an art backwater.”
Hayley Gibaut: two islands in every tile
Hayley Gibaut takes a different route into island identity, starting with her own family.
Born in Jersey to a Madeiran mother and a Jersey father, she describes herself as second-generation Madeiran.
Her work, ‘Botânica Jersey: Two Ilhas Together’, brings those two sides of her heritage together.
Jersey flowers are transformed into designs inspired by Portuguese tiles, while another set uses the red, blue, yellow and green colours associated with traditional Madeiran folk dress.
“I wanted it to be quite confronting,” Gibaut said.
The pieces are arranged in a grid, echoing the way Portuguese tiles can dominate walls and buildings around Madeira and Portugal.
But look closer and the apparent uniformity starts to break down.
The same flowers appear more than once, but each has subtle differences in shape, colour and painting, reflecting the idea that people can share a culture or heritage without having identical experiences.
For Gibaut, that became even more personal after the death of her father last year.
Looking through family photographs prompted her to think more deeply about her roots and the relationship between life and death.
“They bloom and fade just like us,” she said.
The work has also struck a chord with other people with mixed Jersey and Portuguese heritage, with some visitors approaching her to talk about their own families and connections.
Emilie Knight: painting ‘absolute chaos’
Then there is ‘Big Mama’, an enormous, chaotic-looking work by Jersey-based Emilie Knight.
It explores identity, womanhood and what it means to be an autistic woman.
Knight recently received an autism diagnosis, prompting her to reconsider why she has always worked in the way she does.
“When I was doing my fine art degree, I just painted and then I couldn’t eloquently explain why I did things,” she said.
“Now I can actually start understanding.”
The eight-by-eight-foot work is made from two sheets of plywood and ordinary household paint.
Knight worked partly on the floor, moving paint with her hands, fingers and feet. Some of the repetitive marks represent autistic stimming.
The result is, in Knight’s words, a picture of what her brain feels like from the inside.
“It’s chaos. It’s absolute chaos in there.”
But there are moments of calm too, creating a tension between order and disorder.
Even the materials are deliberately ordinary. The paint came from a hardware store rather than a specialist art supplier, as did the boards she painted on.
Art without borders
Those three works could hardly be more different, but that is rather the point.
David Ummels, founder of Art for Guernsey, said the exhibition was part of the organisation’s wider aim of using art to build connections between Guernsey and other places.
The project grew out of a trip to Brittany four years ago with ArtHouse Jersey and led to the first Channel Islands Contemporary Art Show in 2024.
This second edition brings together Art for Guernsey, ArtHouse Jersey and Passerelle Centre d’Art Contemporain in Brest.
For Mr Ummels, putting island artists alongside artists from elsewhere is about creating new conversations and challenging people to see their surroundings differently.
“There’s an opportunity for the islanders to come and challenge their thinking,” he said.
The exhibition features work from Charlie Buchanan, Ruby Butler, Hayley Gibaut, Vincent Girard, Helen Glencross, Victor Guerin, Gabrielle Herveet, Emilie Knight, Malgorzata Krzysztofik, Louise London, Vincent Malassis, Charlie Mcfarley, Toby Rainbird, Nicole Sheppard, India Silvester, Bridget Spinney and Iwan Warnet.
Together, their work covers island life, landscape, culture, identity, community and connection from a host of very different perspectives.
And if the exhibition proves anything, it is that there is rather more to contemporary island art than picturesque landscapes and paintings of the sea.
‘The Channel Islands Contemporary Art Show’ opened at the Art for Guernsey Gallery in Mansell Street on Friday 11 September and runs until Saturday 7 November, with free entry.
