
Many hands make lightwork (2021)
Fantastical Minecraft night time experience inspired by the lives, loves and fates of Rockingham Castle’s female inhabitants throughout history.
Investigating the life of things across space and time
Installation, textiles, objects, drawing and audio by Sarah Gillett
The flimsy copy appears in the exhibition The Howse Shal be Preserved, Rockingham Castle. Commissioned by Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, 2020-2021
Fantastical Minecraft night time experience inspired by the lives, loves and fates of Rockingham Castle’s female inhabitants throughout history.
Inspired by the lives of women at Rockingham Castle and their resonance in history, literature and spirituality, this web-based artwork takes the form of a sleeping ghostly female figure and explores an interior world where memory, dreams and shadows reign.
Rewrite of Clara H. Scott’s 1895 hymn, Open my eyes, that I may see , a favourite opening anthem for seances at Rockingham Castle in the 1930s. My version emphasises the house as a haunted body.
There was something wrong with the sea. The waves were oily and green and forest-filled, like the kelp had been ripped from its leathery footholds by a far away storm and carried here by the currents. A thick tangle of tentacles and skeins spread across the water holding bulging sacs that popped open as they reached the surface and spewed hundreds of bugs onto the undulating skin.
The old fart in Room 17 is becoming a problem. He does it even when his wife’s on the terrace, sweating, counting her rosaries. Clack-clack. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Ah, Mamma, what would you say if you could see me now? Four stringy children and a fat pig of a husband who belches triumphantly after every meal and snores all night. Clack-clack-clack.
Strawberries are the taste of summer. Bite into one and it’s a nostalgic pleasure trip. The lazy slog and echo of a village cricket match. The twang of rain and tennis racket. The arrowhead dart of swallows quick and fluttering as a power surge, scattering across the screen as missing pixels.
Sarah Gillett is an artist and writer from Lancashire, UK.
She currently lives in London.