Dreams of a Winter Night
Part of the Picture House Exhibition
5 May - 30 September, Belsay Hall, Northumberland

An Installation by Geraldine Pilgrim
Produced in association with Corridor

‘The dreams of a young girl the night before her coming out party inhabit these empty bedrooms at Belsay Hall. Longing for love and romance, her childhood world dissolves into social connections, potential husbands and family obligations.’

Geraldine Pilgrim has exceptional artistic vision. Describing herself as a director/designer and installation artist she set up Corridor in the year 2000, a performance company that creates site-specific events often with young people, older people and community groups working alongside professional artists.
Her own particular work specialises in performance installations in unusual buildings.

Belsay appears to have been waiting for Geraldine Pilgrim - its presence, atmosphere and emptiness waiting to be filled with memories both imagined and real. The artist describes the process of creating her work as “like peeling away different layers of wall paper to release the ghost of the building’s past’.

Indeed it was the wallpaper that first started her thinking. ‘Inspired by the fading patterns of the wallpaper that through time have become etched into the empty bedroom walls, I imagined a young girl poised on the brink of adulthood, growing up in this isolated environment surrounded by the sombre faces of her family photographs.’

The artist became curious about one particular member of the Middleton family. Kitty Middleton was born in 1907 and many former servants remembered Kitty’s coming-out party with fondness. Guests arrived in elegant coaches, chambermaids peered from the top staircase to view the beautiful dresses and smart suits.

Together with her creative team, Geraldine Pilgrim has realised a poignant work that combines the imagined memories of Kitty’s disappearing childhood with her
fears and excitement for the future. Four thousand teacups and saucers, provided by Josiah Wedgwood & Sons Ltd flow through one of the smaller bedrooms, in another remnants of a forest weaves its way upward from floor to ceiling and in the smallest of all we see the ghostly image of Kitty combing her hair in preparation for the party, whilst a servant peers at her through a crack in the furniture.

Judith King
Curator, Picture House

Excerpt from Picture House catalogue