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Writer and curator Ciara Healy profiles Ruth Jones, whose wide-ranging work explores
the communitarian and spiritual value of creative rituals and rites of passage in west Wales
West Wales has a very physical
landscape, where one can
often experience a profound
sense of melancholia.
Communities living here can be
fractious and suspicious of the
newcomer and of change, preferring
instead the security of certainty.
Certainty is a challenging condition
for any artist to navigate, yet
artist Ruth Jones is aware that the
need for certainty comes from an
understandable human response to
living on this unpredictable rainsoaked edge of the Irish Sea.
Ruth Jones has been living and
working in West Wales since 2003.
Her practice as an artist, writer
and curator is concerned with
building connections for communities
through creative rituals and rites
of passage, a process she believes
can create new identities and social
relationships.
‘Chwarel’ (2010) is an example of how
Jones addresses this notion in a
physical space. This video installation
work, produced in collaboration with
Cardiff-based artist Andrea Williams,
was filmed in the disused quarries at
Porthgain in Pembrokeshire. Placing
an ad in local papers, Jones invited
volunteers to dress up in the style
of a group of quarry workers found
in a photograph taken in 1908.
The film begins with a rotating
360-degree panorama shot of the
quarry area. However, with every
additional rotation, layers of other
moments in time emerge and recede.
In one rotation the volunteers
appear standing against the looming
rocks; on another they have
vanished.
‘Vigil’ (2009) also investigates
liminality in the landscape, this sense
of shifting time and space. This
work is presented as an installation
with 5:1 surround sound, creating a
completely immersive environment
for the viewer. It depicts a number
of different physical spaces: a
lighthouse and the surrounding
landscape irradiated by its rotating
beam of light, a farmhouse interior
which contains a heavily pregnant
woman sitting alone in an empty
room, the beam of light rhythmically
illuminating her features.
The final world presented in this
film is the bottom of the seabed,
where seals dart through drifting
hedgerows of seaweed. Like
‘Chwarel’, the multiple narratives
Holy Hiatus ritual, community
and place 2008,
curated by
Ruth Jones.
Image: Alastair
MacLennan Lure in
Rule, durational
performance,
Cardigan. Credit:
Ben Stammers
‘Building connections for communities through
creative rituals and rites of passage’
and perspectives in this film are
anchored by a rotating axis –
in this case the light of Strumble Head
Lighthouse in North Pembrokeshire.
This rhythmic light seems to permeate
both the land and the psyche of
its inhabitants, accompanied by the
pulsating sound of a baby’s heart.
in 2008 and included the work of five
performance and lens-based artists,
all of whom made work that addressed
ritual, community and place.
In 2010 this project was collated into
a publication, with contextual essays
by Jones, entitled ‘Holy Hiatus: ritual
and community in public art’.
‘Holy Hiatus’ (2008-present day)
began as a curatorial project and
has now developed into a formal
organisation involving a programme
of workshops and talks by artists
with a participatory practice. The
first Holy Hiatus event Jones curated
took place in Cardigan, Pemrokeshire,
This bilingual book, published by
Parthian, was launched in conjunction
with two symposia hosting
international speakers from a broad
range of disciplines, including Cultural
Geography, Archaeology, Theology and
History.
NOTES FROM WALES | AUTUMN 2014 29