C101
Article
Belfast:
Ruth Jones at Old Museum Arts Centre
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Ruth Jones: sleepers,
2002, photograph; courtesy the artist
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The image, projected on to the back
wall of the Old Museum Art's Centre's exhibition space, filling
it entirely, is of young people lying on blankets spread on
the grass. There are ten or fifteen of them - men and women,
all reclining in different positions, all with their eyes
closed, apparently sleeping. The same patchwork of blankets
covers the floor, extending back to the thick curtains which
close off the room. Because of this, or because of the gable-end
shape of the wall and the image, the dimensions of the space
become strangely apparent. It's the same feeling you get sitting
inside a tent: dim and secluded, kind of comforting. Spend
more than five minutes here, and you'll realise the blankets
are not just for decoration.
Upstairs in this building in 1935,
the Egyptian mummy Takabuti was inspected in less hospitable
surroundings; the body was unwrapped - as the publicity accompanying
the show puts it - to an audience of one hundred and thirty
gentlemen who were members of the Belfast Natural History
and Philosophical Society. Artist Ruth Jones takes this macabre
strip-tease as the starting point of her investigations, drawing
parallels with other popular images of feminine passivity,
such as Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. An alternative to
these accounts of "sleepers," she suggests might be found
in early western folktales in which the sleeper is characterised
as active or "lying dormant until the time is ripe for reawakening."
The figures in this image, then,
are not exotic - not even dramatic. Unlike the 130-1 ratio
of the Egyptian unwrapping, there's a sense of strength in
numbers, and the location of the bodies in the open air, in
the public, marks a contrast with the curtains and cushionings
of the viewing space. But there are no simple reversals of
activity and passivity here. Instead, the extension of the
bedding beyond the reach of the image feels like a genuine
generosity - an invitation to a less predatory viewing. The
longer you lie about here, the more persuasively and affectively
the boundaries between detachment and participation, interiority
and exteriority, seem to become blurred.
A review of the show pinned up in
the foyer of the Arts centre comments that Jones might be
forgiven for not having taken the photograph herself. It seems
far more important that she's actually in it; one of the company,
her head is just visible on the far right of the wall. In
fact - and in the spirit of rethinking subject/ object positions
- I'm there as well. Here perhaps the divisions between participation
and observation are more than usually indistinct, the invitation
to 'become a sleeper' more literal. The event took place early
in May on a playing field by the Ormeau road, and typically
it rained. Most of us who were there went to see the result
- and it seems appropriate that no one could figure out who
was who (I mistook two sleepers for me), whether that was
somebody's foot etc. None of us, I think, had seen pictures
of ourselves reclining full length - asleep, or seeming to
be asleep - before. For my part - though I can't figure out
how I contrived to look like I have only one leg or how my
stomach made it into view - the image continues to fascinate
me. Perhaps it's just the idea of me lying quietly there among
people I know and people I don't. There's a really weird expression
on my face: it's either amusement or (I wouldn't know) just
what I look like relaxed - but, characteristically of this
show, it's impossible to say which.
Leontia Flynn is a Ph. D.
student at Queen's University, Belfast.
Ruth Jones: sleepers, Old
Museum Arts Centre, July/August 2002.
