- Venue
- Ruthin Gaol, Nantclwyd y Dre and Ruthin Craft Centre
- Location
- Wales
Cell
Ruthin Town Centre – Ruthin Gaol, Nantclwyd y Dre & Ruthin Craft Centre
28-30 August
Ashamedly, this is my first visit to Ruthin since the Craft Centre was demolished in 2007. As I walk through large metallic gates resembling that of a prison into RCC’s grounds, I spot an androgynous chalk-faced prisoner covered in broad arrows complete with ankle shackle, heavy ball and oversized scotch cap chained to a portable music machine that bellows Johnny Cash’s Walk the Line. The sound of the man in black shifts this stony, deadpan prisoner into drawing single chalk strokes and demonstrating a controlled and precise line dancing that leads me to the three sites that encompass Cell. Like a more world weary Pied Piper stopping traffic and turning heads, Megan Broadmeadow’s Walk the Line is remarkable in embodying her practice’s dexterity and inventiveness in a single but industrious and repetitive action. Broadmeadow’s work, with tongue firmly in cheek, offers a space for interaction and intellectual discussion. In its’ imperfection it appeals to our human foibles and contrasts to conventional moral assumptions.
No sooner do I arrive at Ruthin Gaol then I am locked into a pitch-black cell. I sit and contemplate the loss of my Sunday while a piece of sonic art plays. However, Ed Wright’s Thinking inside the Box is a dizzying amalgam of minimal sound taken from the prison. A metallic, cacophonous wheezing reflects the ailing buildings shameful memories full of the helplessness and hopes of prisoners in each bar and cell. Although not conceptually new, Wright treats each routine clank of a key, slam of a cell door and step on the hard concrete floor with the love of a composer who knows the cold hand of isolation through the pursuit of his art.
A 5 ft Padded Duck, property of Femke van Gent, stares straight through me with one beady eye. Has light deprivation and isolation caused this hallucination? Has the isolation affected my sanity? I hover outside the cell door rocking from foot to foot, then rush headfirst, succumbing to a cwtch from the duck. This calms me momentarily but as I pull away from my embrace I notice the duck has large steel toe capped boots and high visibility waterproof trousers. I edge slowly out of the room.
Emma Louis’s Light Lines has me peering through a peephole but it is not what greets my eye that I respond to first, it is the musty stench of this prisoner’s cell. As my stomach baulks and my eyes adjust, slowly a lone figure performing what seems to be self-flagellation burns before my naked eye. I cannot look for long, as the figure turns I am confronted by its’ stare. I scramble to move away from its gaze but something pulls me back for one last peek. I last a little longer this time then hurry down stairs.
Nantclwyd y Dre is the oldest surviving town house in Wales and thoroughly lives up to its title by being overwhelmingly macabre. Huw Davies’s film Don’t disbelieve all you read creates a link between the past and the present, using a blend of visual storytelling that documents his transformation. From finding an egg and then a toad crawling up his stairs to discovering scraps of paper declaring ‘Seek and ye shall find’ behind bookcases. Davies is driven out, deserting the property only after documenting his experiences.
On entering Julia Peat’s playful Batty Boop! my curiosity is drawn to the incessant nattering and chattering of Nant Clwyd y Dre’s bats. In this hybrid vocalisation Peat successfully combines a love of nature with the absurd. Who would have thought the conversation of flying mammals would be so delightfully banal?
At Ruthin Craft Centre, Connie Middleman shows three videos including Clown, highly commended for the Alternative Turner Prize in 2007. It is in Rooster-Screentest 1 where Middleman begins to break from the confines of cliché, showing the maturity and freedom that can come from consciously less self-aware.
I am once again lured into a small space, this time for Simon Proffitt’s All that converges must rise which conveys the familiar image of a train travelling through what seems like a never-ending tunnel, distorting time with its’ repetitive and mesmeric movement which is both soothing and unsettling. This film becomes an unrelenting depiction of constant travel evoking a sense of terror and foreboding.
When installing and exhibiting in public spaces, difficulties can often arise between ‘art’ and ‘artefact’. Visitors can sometimes grow confused by the less-than-obvious relationship between the two. In Cell each work is located within the collection, forcing the viewer to navigate their way around the historical and the contemporary, making and creating their own connections between art works and exhibits and conjuring intended and unintended narratives for a more personal appreciation of the artistic responses to these quirky and unique environments.
The previous success of Gwaith Powdwr at Penrhyndeudraeth Explosives Factory and now Cell in Ruthin is testimony to the collective thrust currently taking place and enhancing the visual arts in North Wales. Three sites hosting three days of absorbing, interactive and provocative artist-led activity slap banged up in the middle of a rural and historic town.
