Blog post: Joshua Clague

I was lucky enough to have spent the last year in Liverpool after being granted the New Contemporaries x Bluecoat Studio Bursary. This meant moving back home to Merseyside after spending the last four years studying and working in London. Inevitably, I spent a lot of time re-encountering and reflecting on my past here. My practice has always been influenced by my own lived experience, family, memory and fandom.

Everyday I would get the train to the studio. It’s about 28 minutes to get to Liverpool from here. The train line backs on to my old house. Everyday, I caught myself staring into the garden, through my old bedroom window. I could never quite make out if the interior has changed. The plum tree had been cut down. Every other year it would bloom, leaving behind a bed of rotten fruit and wasps. At night, when I was driving home from the train station, I would sometimes take a detour down our old road. Slowing as I passed the living room window, peering through the blinds. The front door hasn’t changed.

I spent a lot of my year thinking about that house and everything that happened there. I found myself writing everyday on the train. Often the same things, re-written, crossed out and rejigged. Memories that came to the surface as I re-tread familiar paths. Noting down the everyday things, people watching, the longing, Grindr hookups, forgotten moments uncovered when rewatching old family tapes, feeling alone in the studio, my dad, all the things I wish I could say to him and of course my incessant listening to Janet Jackson hoping she might shine a light in the right direction.

The following film places all of these elements side by side. Audio extracts of family video footage and Madonna's vocals push up against texts reciting the mundane everyday moments like waiting for a train.

(The video is best experienced with stereo speakers/headphones)

This video contains sexual references.


Joshua Clague
and it feels like I just got home, 2024
Moving image