ROSES OF REDOUBT 

This project is dedicated to all the rose lovers, givers and growers in the ‘Redoubt’ area of Eastbourne, East Sussex.  

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Brexit  fractured communites and encouraged prejudice to the surface.  Covid arrived sending us all indoors stalling chances of  reconsiliation. The tensions were palpable.  Between 2018 - 2020, I decided to create a portrait of the residential area where I live (a neighbourhood made up of mostly terraced houses framed by the sea, a park, a long straight road called Seaside and the town) that did not communicate its wealth, ethnicity, political leanings, gender or age. Noticing how beautifully roses thrive in the coastal soil, I realised that this was our common ground. I mapped a one-mile radius from the Napoleonic Redoubt Fortress that sits on the  on the seafront and after which the area is named, knocked on doors and asked neighbours for a gift of a  single bloom. I used a desktop scanner to record each rose and labelled it with the gifters name and street. 

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The project and subsequent book brings together 169 neighboures and is inspired by the original ’Les Roses’ published between 1817-24 by Belgian artist Pierre-Joseph Redoute,  illustrating  169 stipple engravings of roses from Empress Josephine’s English  garden at Chateau de Malmaison, Paris. -Joseph Redoute’s name and ‘Redoubt’ have the same meaning of ‘formidable’ or ‘stronghold’. More than ever, in these times of a divisive culture heightened by the drive of the media and social media, it is important that communities support, nurture and give strength to one another.

 

Our differences are important but it is also about what we have in common and despite the salty air, roses seem to thrive here.

 

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Elizabeth Doak 

August 2021