Go home Polish documents Michal Iwanowski's 1,900 walk from Wales to Poland in search of a definition of 'home' in post-Brexit Europe. I had the great pleasure of it into a book. After many conversations, discussions and trying out different approaches, we decided to hide two separate book blocks in one five-piece hardcover. One block contains photographs and the other is an essay that can be removed from the binding and conveniently read separately.
"On 27 April 2018, Michał Iwanowski left his house in Cardiff to walk to his home village of Mokrzeszów in Poland. Carrying British and Polish passports and wearing a T-shirt bearing the word “Polska”, he began his 1,200-mile journey east, sticking as closely as possible to a straight line he had drawn on a map. Over 105 days, it would take him through Wales, England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and the Czech Republic. (...) Iwanowski had been thinking about walking to Poland for several years, after being confronted in 2008 by graffiti scrawled on a wall in the Roath area of Cardiff, where he lives. “Go Home, Polish,” it read. He has since appropriated the line for the project’s title. “I wasn’t shocked, but it stayed with me,” he says. “I started thinking, ‘Should I be really going home or am I already home?’ As Brexit became more volatile, I found myself thinking more about what you might call the human dilemma of home: how we can, if we have to, make a home anywhere and nowhere.”" (excerpt from Sean O’Hagan article for the Guardian)
"Since completing the walk, I have exhibited the photographs in a number of solo and group shows, but the written account of the people and stories is yet to be shared - hence why I feel making this book is very important. It will not only complete the Go home Polish project, but also make it available to wider audiences, outside of the gallery space." (Words by Michal Iwanowski)
