And they’re back! Cameras and spent Super 8mm film are starting to arrive at the door from participating families. Looking forward to processing the film and seeing what treasures are inside. My older sisters spoke about when our Dad use to receive back a processed roll of Super 8mm film back after a holiday, and what an exciting moment it was. They made real ceremony of setting up the projector, the sheet as a screen and being nominated ‘the light girl’ to turn off the lights. They described the ritual as “releasing the butterfly”. I’m loving the little notes that are coming back written on the rolls of film from the families – “pretty sure this ones ok”, we had a bit of trouble with cartridges jamming unfortunately.

MEET THE ARTICLE 16 TEAM! Asten Holmes-Elliott is an artist and filmmaker whose work examines ideas of identity, otherness and belonging. They have been hoping to create ARTICLE 16 for a number of years, after revisiting their late father’s collection of 8mm home movies. Asten’s Dad was an artist and sculptor/stone mason, and named Asten after the ancient river crossed by the Normans in the Battle of Hastings, near the abbey he was restoring. He was 10 yrs old in WW2, and used the same standard 8mm camera to film his first family with Asten’s half siblings, and then their family, spanning the gap of generations. @aceagrams funded project ARTICLE 16 allows Asten to follow in his footsteps, where shooting LGBTQI+ families and home developing 8mm film will build a closeness to their Dad, whilst creating a speculative place in history for their own LGBTQI+ community where they can belong.

Eleanor Jones is a lecturer at the University of Southampton. She is particularly interested in queer theory and disability studies, especially the ways that queerness and disability relate to ideas about the ‘family’, and histories of race and empire. Dr Jones is cultural consultant on the project, helping us to contextualise the work and keeping us queer!

Fred is an artist living in Southampton whose interests lie in exploring personal relationships as a fat, ill, queer person. For this project they are handling social media and logistics whilst also exploring beliefs and ideals around family in their own practice.

It’s Fred again. (@iffybiro & @fredashleighthornton)

The first same sex relationship I ever saw was a kiss between two characters in ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’. I must have been about six or seven years old. I was scandalized. My mum didn’t know any LGBTQ+ people at this time in our lives and it was the first time I encountered queerness. I was scared and outraged, and I had no idea why. Homophobia had already seeped into my baby brain somehow without ever having knowingly seen or been around LGBT+ people. Homophobes are always arguing that we are pushing the ‘queer agenda’ down their throats or in their faces whilst gendered ear plugs and ‘Love Island’ exist. I had to work out my own queerphobia and am still having to do that each day as an openly queer person. I grew out of the homophobia quickly, though my first reaction to queerness was negative. I wonder how much quicker it would have happened and if it would have happened at all had there been more positive representation.

ARTICLE 16 is a new video art piece by Asten Holmes-Elliott exhibiting @johnhansardgallery, @aspacearts The Alfred Arcade, and The Spark Building @solentuniversity, until 19th June.

It’s Fred (@iffybiro & @fredashleighthornton)

I remember the first out queer person I knew, a friend of my nan’s called Verity. I thought she was great, and she always had the coolest trousers. My nan would later ditch Verity in a very cruel way and go on to talk badly about her for being a lesbian. (For context, my nan is the kind of person who has racist dolls on display in her living room and once handed me a Bible with a union jack on the front and the first page was a picture of the Queen because you know, the Queen wrote the Bible obviously.) I was sad when Verity was no longer around my nan’s house because she never spoke down to me and introduced me to lebkuchen, a German gingerbread type thing that I now love and eat loads of every Christmas time. And she also knew all about foraging and natural remedies for things. She was like a cool witch. Verity was very much herself and her interactions didn’t feel performative as I started to notice other interactions did with my more homophobic family. (Though they’d never accept being called homophobic because they love Queen and Elton John.)

ARTICLE 16 is a new video art piece by Asten Holmes-Elliott exhibiting @johnhansardgallery, @aspacearts The Alfred Arcade, and The Spark Building @solentuniversity, until 19th June.

ARTICLE 16 is exhibited in a non-traditional format outside the gallery walls, projected outside onto the pavement at night. Due to possible covid restrictions and the time the piece becomes visible, it maybe difficult for people to see the piece as much as they may like. So we will be having an online launch day, where people can view the artwork online for a limited time. Watch this space!
ARTICLE 16 is a new video art piece exhibiting @johnhansardgallery, @aspacearts The Alfred Arcade, and The Spark Building @solentuniversity, until 19th June.
The artwork hopes to capture LGBTQI+ families using a format that has been traditionally associated with the typical ‘nuclear family’, to playfully insert queer people and families into a shared cultural memory, to challenge certain assumptions about what makes a family, to increase visibility, and to carve out space.

Hi everyone, It is Fred again. (@iffybiro & @fredashleighthornton)

As Pride month starts, I get excited to see all the colours in the street and see all the beautiful people celebrating who they are. But alas, as a physically disabled and mentally ill queer, I am not about all that marching and all that noise. Happy to watch it, never want it to go away, but let me sit down in a quiet corner. This is part of why I love ARTICLE 16 so much. Showing the quieter more everyday part of queer lives, best visible at night with the nostalgic feel of super 8mm film. It is comforting and reassuring to me with my own familial trauma to see domestic representation of the LGBTQ+ community existing peacefully in the loving families they have built for themselves.

ARTICLE 16 is a new video art piece by Asten Holmes-Elliott exhibiting @johnhansardgallery, @aspacearts The Alfred Arcade, and The Spark Building @solentuniversity, until 19th June.

ARTICLE 16 is a new video art piece exhibiting @johnhansardgallery , @aspacearts The Alfred Arcade, and The Spark Building @solentuniversity, until 19th June.

The artwork hopes to capture LGBTQI+ families using a format that has been traditionally associated with the typical ‘nuclear family’, to playfully insert queer people and families into a shared cultural memory, to challenge certain assumptions about what makes a family, to increase visibility, and to carve out space.

Thank you so much to @iamnowbenn and @xyzchar for participating in the project, and filming lil Silver here, and twin Angel somewhere climbing a highchair off frame, chasing bubbles.

ARTICLE 16 will be projected 25th May-19th of June, overnight from the @johnhansardgallery in Guildhall square and The Alfred Arcade on Old Northam Road 5pm-7am (though is best visible after 8pm)
It will also be screened daily at The Spark at @solentuniversity

Thank you so much to Richard, Arron and Aanya for being part of this and giving us this gorgeous still of their family.

ARTICLE 16 is almost ready to rock! Just a slight more tweaking on one of the sites and we are ready to go! Had a great time installing @johnhansardgallery with the awesome @leebroughhall and @aspacearts The Alfred Arcade with the ultimate @kaneapplegate. And thank you to the @solentuniversity tech team for setting up the screens on campus for me.

ARTICLE 16 celebrates the non-traditional family unit. Over recent months, artist and filmmaker Asten Holmes-Elliott invited three queer and non-traditional households to capture their own typical family moments on old format Super 8mm film. These recordings were hand developed by the artist and edited to form three new film works.

The artwork hopes to capture LGBTQI+ families using a format that has been traditionally associated with the typical ‘nuclear family’. For the artist, it is a way to playfully insert queer people and families into a shared cultural memory, to challenge certain assumptions about what makes a family, to increase visibility, and to carve out space.

ARTICLE 16 will be projected overnight in Guildhall Square & Old Northam Road 5pm – 7am (although you probably can’t see it until about 8pm) and screened daily in Solent University, The Spark, East Park Terrace.

The new piece was made in partnership with a space arts, John Hansard Gallery and Solent University, and was made possible thanks to public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England @aceagrams

Hi everyone it’s Fred, (@iffybiro @fredashleighthornton ) I’m going to take over Asten’s account every now and then to post about ‘Article 16’. Today I want to talk about #rainbowfamilies that ‘Article 16’ aims to celebrate. I have posted a couple pics of my own #rainbowfamily . Feel free to tell us about yours and tag and share like there’s no tomorrow.

My family is made up of seven absolutely wonderful weirdos.
My sister Maisie calls our non-bio dad Bryan a ‘lesbian’ as a term of endearment, the word ‘lesbian’ means something completely different in her head and is often accompanied with an affection shoulder squeeze.
I remember taking my brother Astor into Reading with our Christmas money to buy him his first dress that wasn’t a hand me down or Textiles GCSE project of mine (he was growing out of the denim shift dress). The dress we settled on had pink cars all over it.
My sister Billie told me she too was non-binary like it was the most casual thing in the world as I anxiously tried to broach the subject to her not sure if I would be able to explain it to an eight-year-old who already knew and embraced gender chaos.
My nan believed my friend Kelly and I were actually engaged because we referred to each other as ‘wife’ so often. When Kelly got engaged to Tom, she had even more questions so to wind her up we just responded that we were very modern and let her brain melt.
My family is made of blood relations and chosen people and like many people’s families it can be fragmented and confusing and damn near impossible to draw out in a family tree. I love my family as it stands and as much trauma and soap opera style dramas as we have gone through, I think we are the best most great family and everyone else is jealous. (but not really love and light and all that).