Come to the Exhibition. I Hope it Rocks Your World

Rolls of dried earth compress together. Red clay perforated. Almost a hiding place. The wailing begins. Some voices are louder than others. A domestic haunting.

I don’t have an outdoor garden, though I wish I did. So, to make up for it, my flat is home to a selection of diminutive houseplants. They are usually in varying stages of drying out into browned crispy gestures, which I notice appearing when I go to water them.

While I attempt to replicate an outdoor garden inside, some aspects of garden domesticity continue to allude to me. Something I have never entirely understood is why people have garden rockeries? If you happen to have one, please tell me, why? What is their function!? To my mind, it’s a collection of unsightly rubble that the homeowner leaves in their garden because it’s too cumbersome to move. Surely, we should not spend our time staring at rocks, it’s so dull, almost akin to watching paint dry… For me, the only interesting thing to say about them is that they have been there billions of years longer than you. This knowledge is no good either, where does it leave you? Bored and depressed, because now you know you are insignificant, and the dull lifeless rock will out-live you anyway. Steer clear of these gits. Steer clear.

You would not catch me with a garden rockery in my flat that’s for sure… Not unless it was infinitely cooler…

Due to my general bemusement with the stalwart stones, I decided to enter an open call op

opportunity to showcase my installation ‘Haunted Rockery II’ at HOME as part of the group show for the Manchester Open Exhibition 2022. My primary objective for the installation was to expose and humiliate all rockeries the world over by making an uber-mensch version. How do you do that, you ask? You make whatever you find boring, haunted.

Once I had begun this artistic venture, I found it hard to not get lost in its romantic ideas of it. Go on, cast your mind back to the last time you were exposed to a garden rockery. Now you come to think of it, was there something kind of unsettling about the way the rocks leant against each other? The way proximity of jagged stones created a consortium of tense miniature entrances, with calcium deposit mouths screaming silently. These garden rockeries were already haunted stylistically, I just added the sound effects.

Traditionally, fairy rings get all the glory, but when your home is graced with a haunting and it’s in your dull garden rockery. Well, you know you’ve hit gold. Just don’t expect those wailing spirits to speak sense.

Come to the exhibition, I hope it rocks your world!

Where:

HOME 2 Tony Wilson Place Manchester M15 4FN

When:

Manchester Open Preview Weekend: Fri 21 Jan - Sun 23 Jan 2022

Exhibition: Mon 24 Jan – Sun 27 March 2022

The gallery is free to attend. Donations are welcome.

More information about the preview weekend and our scheduled events will follow soon. You can keep up to date with the latest details of the exhibition, by heading to the Manchester Open 2022 Exhibition Page on HOME’s website.

#mcropen2022 #claretownley #hauntedrockery #homemcr