IMPOSSIBLE CHANGELING

REVIEW BY Yasmin Canvin, Independent Curator, Towner Art Gallery

Caroline Wright is a multi-disciplinary artist who moves seamlessly between different forms of language – oral, visual, sign and written – to explore the physical and philosophical aspects of human communication, the differences and commonalities in human behaviour. To counter a phrase of Roland Barthes: ‘Speech is irreversible; that is its fatality’, Wright has remained silent during several of her recent performances, instead relying on alternative, more subtle and ambiguous means of communication; body language and improvised sign language, quiet breathing, even the sound of a quill pen repeatedly writing the same phrase. Her latest work continues this exploration of mute, yet evocative communication

For Impossible Changeling, Wright carefully selected 142 pebbles as she walked along Aldeburgh beach near her studio in Suffolk.  The pebbles were chosen according to how they felt in her hand, the result of being worn and softened by the sea.  Each one was then carefully covered with gold leaf, the delicate gilding process revealing the subtle texture on the surface of the pebble.  Early each morning, over nine days during May and June 2008, Wright will place these gilded pebbles along the beach at Eastbourne and wait for walkers and holidaymakers to discover them and take them home, to be placed in their own collections of pebbles.  Just as Wright feels with regard to speech itself, these Impossible Changelings are “a personal and sharing pleasure, an open invitation to strangers who share her love of the sea, a gift with no expectation of anything in return.

Wright often shifts the customary rules of communication to enable participants to re-examine seemingly familiar situations.  In The Visitor Experience. Wright conducted “official tours” around the backyard of a gallery, which contained a fake collection of valuable artifacts, each labelled with its own “provenance”.  Through this performance, Wright invited the audience to question the meaning and understanding of the “artworks”, as prescribed through their function, place and context.  The title of Wright’s latest work alludes to a similar hidden narrative.  According to fairy tales, a changeling was the child of a fairy, troll or other mythical creature, who was secretly left behind in place of a human child.  Over time, their strange appearance or unusual personality would become more apparent and eventually their true identity would be revealed and the parent’s suspicions confirmed.  Wright’s Impossible Changelings are the reverse, initially noticeably different from the other stones on the beach, but if left, over time, the natural environment would return them to their original appearance.

This work was created in response to the movement of the art collection from the former Towner Art Gallery to a new, purpose built site, which is in close proximity to, “a stone’s throw away from” the beach.  Through her changelings, Wright invites us to consider how the new gallery space and staff will affect how we see and understand the collection, to what extent will changing the context alter the meaning of the work?  As time passes, artwork is reassessed and the collection changes.  How will this affect the reading of an individual piece?

This sense of displacement features throughout Wright’s work, as she seeks out opportunities for new experiences, different contexts to engage with, from Tokyo to Ireland to Eastbourne.  As an outsider, Wright observes the “peculiarities of communication in small gestures that distinguish us as individuals, or the instinctive responses, which connect us.  These otherwise insignificant details often go unnoticed by others yet reveal much about us.  Wright sees the extraordinary in the ordinary and turns everyday activities into personal rituals; breathing, drinking tea, shopping, walking along the beach, these become special moments. 

For Wright, being able to immerse herself in new surroundings, to experience and then respond to that environment intuitively, as an artist, through gentle questioning and challenging is a privilege and a great responsibility.  She is constantly aware that her own actions could alter that place and people’s behaviour, disturbing the former status quo, like the ripple of a pebble thrown in a pond or an infiltrator who does not belong, a changeling.

Through her process led conceptual practice, discrete interventions and subtle performances, Wright nudges us into making small, but significant shifts, which encourage us to question our personal encounters, in the same way an artist might illuminate an old manuscript to draw attention to the value contained in the written word.  We might stoop to pick up a pebble on a beach, through which we question the notion of value.  In Wright’s work, we do not feel the usual disappointment of stopping to pick up something shiny to discover it is mere detritus, more environmental damage.  Instead this time the bright shiny thing is real gold…



REVIEW BY Sanna Moore Exhibitions Curator, Towner Art Gallery

Impossible Changeling completes a series of artist interventions across Eastbourne in the run up to the opening of the new art gallery in autumn 2008. The Towner Art Gallery and Local History Museum closed its doors to the public in December 2005.  Housed in a Georgian Manor House in Gildredge Park, in Eastbourne’s Old Town the gallery and collection will soon move to its new home beside the Congress Theatre a stone’s throw from the seafront.

Based in Suffolk, Caroline Wright spent time in Eastbourne researching the history of the town and the gallery. She discovered a link between Eastbourne and Suffolk, Lord Cavendish, responsible for much of Eastbourne's architecture and town planning, was originally from the small village of Cavendish in Suffolk. Through traveling between Suffolk and Eastbourne on several occasions during a very wet winter, Wright began to think about the idea of exchange between the two places.

Towner Off-site has been designed to give the gallery a presence at key locations in Eastbourne while the new building is nearing completion. The beach and seafront is a popular location for residents and people visiting Eastbourne.  Wright chose to position this project in the beach huts beneath the Wish Tower slope as it is within a two minute walking distance from the new gallery which is visible from the top of the slope.

Beach huts are a place of change and transformation where you leave the trappings of everyday life behind and break into leisure time. By covering the inside of Hut 8 in gold leaf, Wright is transforming the interior into a golden sanctuary, a place of rest and refuge from the outside world and the elements. The golden interior gives the hut a shrine like quality, a place to contemplate while looking out across the pebbled beach towards the sea.

Each day a number of golden pebbles are scattered onto the beach. Each pebble has been sourced by Wright from a beach in Suffolk near her studio, covered with gold leaf and transported to Eastbourne. The metamorphosis of the pebbles and the hut reflects the changes and transformation that the gallery is going through before the opening of the new building. The process of applying gold leaf to the pebbles changes their function and renders them decorative objects (like golden nuggets) yet left on the beach with exposure to the elements they will eventually return to their original state. A little bit of Suffolk left behind on the Sussex coast.