ruth jones
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Ruth Jones is an artist based in Pembrokeshire, South Wales. Her work explores liminal, or threshold states of being or consciousness. The liminal realm is a transitional one, a passageway between two distinct states eg. awake / asleep, conscious / unconscious, the past / the present. Anthropologist Victor Turner has described it as ‘a place that is not a place and a time that is not a time’. The uncertainty of these in-between states has led them to be regarded with suspicion and anxiety, but they also have enormous creative potential and can be seen as spaces of 'becoming', where our identities undergo change or transformation. Through installations, public art projects and film work, Ruth uses ritual patterns to create physical or psychological spaces in which the possibility of an experience of liminality can occur for the viewer or participant.
Recent projects have focused on the three way relationships between humans animals and the land. The work draws on magico-mythological readings of land as well as recent reconceptualisations of land and rural places in fields such as anthropology and cultural geography. Many of the projects make use of public spaces and pay attention to the particularity of place, often engaging people or communities who have a connection to the place directly in the process of developing and creating the work.
Ruth is currently an AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) Research Fellow based at the University of West England, Bristol. She is developing a new body of work that explores how we can access the liminal realm through artworks by altering our experience of time through ritual.
Ruth is working on a collaborative new film project "Chwarel" (formerly called "Cloddfa") with artist Andrea Williams exploring the disused quarry at Porthgain, West Wales. As part of the project, 80 men and women took part in the recreation of a photograph of quarry workers from 1908. The audio-visual installation will be exhibited at Howard Gardens Gallery, UWIC, Cardiff 16th - 20th February. To view photos and details about the exhibition and directions to the gallery click on the link.