This is Jane's Installation, one of her most ambitious projects to date inspired by the traces of a love story from WW1. It was exhibited in various galleries and museums, with rolling art engagement projects working with hundreds of young people spanning eight years from 2011-2018.

In July 1917, Lieut. W.G.Hicks was killed in France. He left behind a life in Kent and a fiancée, Jessie Ellman,

to whom he never returned.

​

This immersive installation almost 100 years later uncovers the traces of his memory and tells glimpses of their story through artworks, objects and artefacts. Bringing together strands of her work in theatre set design, visual art installation, making and curating, Degrees of Separation takes you on a journey exploring memory, connection and separation through WW1.

Part museum collection, part archive of dreams, Jane’s work invites you to step into a world between the real and the imagined and asks what can be uncovered about a man’s life and love from just a few surviving objects.

​

Jane says -   “This project feels like one I’ve been travelling towards since my childhood. I have always been obsessed and horrified by the First World War. I used to feel like a soldier was around me somewhere when I was little and images of the trenches filled my imagination. When I encountered old sepia photographs of people from another time, of proud soldiers in uniform, left unloved in junk shops, I bought them.

I felt as if I was the custodian of their memories even if I didn’t even know their names."