Working from his studio north of Inverness, Allan Bransbury created ‘Making Do’, a celebration of his parents’ resilience in occupied Jersey, using materials which include an old copy of the Jersey Evening Post.
The JEP article about Harry and Phyllis Bransbury appeared in November 1994 as part of a series describing Islanders living under German rule and forms the centrepiece of Mr Bransbury’s tribute, which is to be shown in the forthcoming CCA Galleries Summer Exhibition.
‘Much of my work involves working with materials which are to hand,’ he said.
‘Everything I put in it was stuff I had in the workshop and the various sheds and work areas in the garden.
‘I was trying to do it in the spirit of making do that my parents talked about. I had them very much in mind at the time.’
Another reminder of life in Jersey acted as the catalyst for Mr Bransbury in the creative process. Every 9 May, from a makeshift flagpole in his Kilmuir garden a few miles north of Inverness, Mr Bransbury raises the Jersey flag in his own Liberation Day ceremony that he then photographs.
‘It’s important. I’m very proud of it and I send my boys a copy of the photograph. I make sure the whole family knows. The neighbours also know – we have a local WhatsApp group and I post it there,’ he said.
To make the Liberation piece, he first painted the red cross of the Jersey flag on a canvas glued to a drawing board. He then began to think about a succession of stories – chapters or paragraphs, as he describes them – inspired by his parents’ Occupation.
One is related to fortifications, one to the JEP, and another is about resistance. A different section, featuring buttons and textiles, reminds him of a story about his mother making clothes for him as a very small child.
‘I began fiddling about, shuffling the pieces like islands in the sea – seven with the text, almost symbolic of the Channel Islands, not that I was thinking of it at the time. I thought, I’ve got to embed it somehow, so I cut into the board and inset the panels, so that gradually the piece emerged. The flag acts like an anchor to hold the disparate bits together,’ he explained.
Deprived by the coronavirus of the opportunity to return again to Jersey last month to celebrate Liberation Day, Mr Bransbury was ‘really chuffed’ when Making Do was accepted for the CCA Galleries upcoming exhibition.
Having left the Island in the late 1960s for the UK, he has limited personal connections here today although, as a former member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors, he has two pieces of sculpture in Island collections.
But he would be delighted if Making Do found a permanent home in Jersey, where it could be enjoyed by the public.
‘It’s about my parents, who spent so many years of their lives in Jersey – they managed their diamond wedding anniversary there – so I would be really happy if there was an appropriate place for it to do with Liberation or with culture,’ he said.
