People We Love, at St Helier Town Church (Jersey)

People We Love explores the invisible transaction between a person, a piece of art and the emotion which bonds us all, love. The five screens show filmed portraits of Jersey’s citizens. Each person you see is gazing at a picture of someone they love. A picture that you will never see. The expressions on the faces of participants tell the story of a person they love and the bond that exists between them. Standing within the frame of their gaze, you become not only a witness but, in part, a recipient of the expression of that emotion.

Kit Monkman, KMA: “They meet our questioning gaze without artifice or hostility, instead they stare back with honesty, vulnerability, and love. I find in all of these faces a silent affirmation of much that is best about being human, about the love that binds us, the stories that connect us, the light we create for ourselves, partly in acknowledgement, and partly in defiance, of the pain and suffering that accompanies us all.”

People We Love is a community based international artwork and has been exhibited in York Minster, Selby Abbey, Castle Howard, Pittsburg USA and Viborg Denmark. For this unique iteration of the work, artist Kit Monkman filmed 60 members of the Jersey public in St Helier Town Church providing a moving archive of the Jersey public which joins an international archive and community.

Kit Monkman, founder of KMA works across interactive and screen based media. His installations in the interactive and public realm have dramatically transformed many iconic spaces.

People We Love by KMA. Supported by Motion. Produced by ArtHouse Jersey and Mediale. Commissioned by Mediale using funding by Arts Council England. With special thanks to St Helier Town Church for supporting the Jersey Edition.