Our Day at Alton

Our day at Alton was very pleasant, venison quite right, children well-behaved, and Mr. and Mrs. Digweed taking kindly to our charades and other games… We had a beautiful walk home by moonlight.

Jane Austen’s letter to Cassandra

In her letters, Jane writes of pleasurable occasions where she and her family would enjoy an outing to Alton. She mentions dining out, drinking tea and playing games with friends and in one letter she describes the beautiful moonlight walk home from Alton to Chawton. Our Day at Alton imagines and reenacts the route she might have taken more than 200 years ago. Documenting the present day journey, the work explores the movement of the body through space and time, following a pattern of intervals, where presence is alluded to through the pace and sway of space not yet travelled into. Collating the collection of images, it forms a sequence which maps the current route, while exploring a concept of another presence in another time, The words in the pages of Janes letters are transported through time with a physical connection to place, and render the present day journey with an unfamiliar and perceived past.

Technical manipulation distorts the presentation of Our Day at Alton in order to suggest a time past, romanticised and idealistic. The representation of traffic, dual carriageways, the underpasses, road noise, parked cars, modern signage, building works and drab weather are made sentimental. This makes reference to Jane’s novels, where she describes soldiers in their dashing red coats and the ladies so pretty in their pastel shades of dress. There were extravagant balls to attend in her stories and the proper etiquette of decorum to keep, yet on Britain’s doorstep, the Napoleonic war and political turmoil of the time was rife. 

In a letter to Jane, the work alludes to the practice of creating something appealing and apparently trivial in the presence of ugly truth. It compares her perceived approach to sought objectives in Our Day at Alton to create an illusion of colour and false reality. The letter suggests this does not undermine the horrific events known to be brewing in the background nor does it undermine the reader or viewers intelligence. Instead it suggests a quality most admirable. It could be that in the face of less appealing reality it was vital to present a narrative of daily trivial, yet colourful events as a means of gaining perspective. Not to forget nor dismiss but to uplift and manage the chaotic unravelling of humanity.