Excess Baggage

Excess Baggage is a video and sound installation exploring the overlooked stories of military families.

Centring on Portland’s naval past, the project draws from the artist’s personal history as a child of the Royal Navy, raised in married quarters in Wyke Regis during the 1970s. These spaces—marked by Ministry of Defense crockery, institutional housing and lives lived in the orbit of often absent fathers—formed a strange, often invisible subculture on the edges of military order.

While Portland’s naval legacy is maybe familiar, this project turns its attention to the families—described by my mother as “excess baggage”—who followed the ships and the postings, shaping a lesser-known pattern of internal migration across Britain. Through interviews, hand processed Super 8 film, and home movies, Excess Baggage captures the textures and contradictions of life inside this hidden world.

The project has involved locals with lived experience of military family life, especially those connected to Portland,who have shared their stories.

Presented as an immersive installation, a sequence of image and voice in the dark chambers of  High Angle Battery. The installation at the Battery ties it to the island’s military past—drawing the viewer into an intimate re-thinking of what service, family, and memory mean when the personal and national are tightly entwined.