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Work that came from the artists residency at Shepton Mallet prison.

Writer's picture: Victoria BoneVictoria Bone

My current work is a result of the artists residency at the decommissioned Shepton Mallet prison. On the residency I started making a wearable sculptural entity embodying memory and loss. It has a ghost-like presence existing in liminal spaces. Constructed from dyed warn clothing stitched together, some items have been partially shredded and pieces further away from the body are more loosely joined leaving gaps, these gaps represent how memory is fragmented unreliable.



I'm developing it further by making a beam scale headdress representing justice/judgement. With plans to wear it walking around Sydney gardens and the Holburne Museum in Bath, as part of Richard White's Botany and empire, deep time. For the past two years Richard White has been researching and hosting walks in Bath's Sydney Gardens. Over this time he has generated a series of polemical texts exploring entangled stories of botany, empire and deep time surfacing in the park, revealing and acknowledging the atrocities of empire, provocations towards empathy and justice.


The exploration of face covering is reference to the Victorian prison reform introducing Silence and separation. A hessian sack was placed over the prisoners head preventing them from speaking to or seeing each other (see blog post on research for the residency for more).

I used fabric and crochet doilies as a face covering/veil deceptive of the sewing work undertaken by women in both prison and domestic settings. These will be explored further in preparation to the live performance at Sydney Gardens, Bath.


My other explorations were in various ways to mark time and space. I counted the steps around my cell, B-wing and the exercise yard. Sometimes marking the steps as I took them, other times when I returned to my cell. After wards displaying them around my cell to claim the space as my own, making it my home.








Alongside this large Live art piece I am making small reliquary of hearts made from old odd socks encased in domestic items and considering the display of precious and memorable objects in the home.


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