Imagine a grey, rectangular box pretends to be a ship. Instead
of carrying bananas or crude oil, this vessel holds its prisoners in confinement.
A prison, by definition, resists scrutiny. It is a state institution designed
to house those deemed to be marginal and a threat to public order. MikeRickett’s ‘The Vessel’, recently shown at Works|Projects in Bristol, asks us to
consider how the state takes drastic measures to house prisoners. But such pragmatic functionality is transformed as this giant object slips away under the cover of dark to new locations and activities.
Lured by a view of a floating structure across Portland
Harbour and berthed outside a permanent prison on Portland Bill, HMP The Verne,
Ricketts attempts to photograph this ship that resolutely abdicates any aesthetic
qualities in favour of pure function. Seen from the exterior, it has the
appearance of a warehouse, which is its purpose – the storage of 450 prisoners.
He tries to get close enough to photograph the ship from the cliffs above, but
anticipating restrictions about photographing the structure, Ricketts takes
advantage of a legal helpline to seek guidance. Such concern for legalities
becomes moot when it is towed away in the middle of the night bound for Nigeria
to house oil workers.
The ship was constructed in 1979 as a pontoon ‘flotel’ in
Stockholm and later used as accommodation in the Falklands following the war.
Identified in its life by insidiously nondescript names such as ‘Jascon 27’ and
‘Bibi Resolution’, this vessel embodies the endless, clerical shuffling of
international, corporate assets. Ranging from factory worker accommodation in Germany
to a New York drug rehabilitation centre obscuring river views, the ship is a
commodity untethered to place, function or owner. The only constant is a residential
barge-master with a passion for loudly playing show tunes from ‘Phantom of the
Opera’.
Ricketts unravels this saga of displacement and reassignment,
with an arch doggedness, illustrating the bureaucratic processes of global commodity
exchange. But at the end of his investigations one mystery remains: where is
the painting commissioned to commemorate of its time as a place of detention?
This picture is cited in a letter written by the prison governor congratulating
the artist for producing ‘a remarkable work and so correct in all its points’.
Collating together a film, news clips and the re-discovered painting,
‘The Vessel’ is a project that leads us through a painstaking and funny journey
to pin down something that is wholly elusive. A hollow container has a function
superimposed and then withdrawn. A ship normally subject to weather, tides and
location, temporarily squats by the English coast. Ricketts asks us to consider
its transitional presence and status. All that remains of its service to Her
Majesty’s law and order is a banal painting that attempts to suggest some dignity
in a structure possessing all the elegance of an electricity sub- station.
Titled ‘HM Prison, The Weare 1997-2005’, the rediscovered painting is now on
loan to the exhibition and illustrates the irony of trying to lend gravitas to
something that is a giant, floating shed. Instead of nautical romance, we’re
left looking at a crude rendition of grey geometry sitting awkwardly in Weymouth
harbour, embodying pretence, subterfuge and evasion.
Mike Rickett’s project deftly exposes the dry imperatives shaping this ship’s existence. All that remains of HMP The Weare’s contribution to our national life is an insipid ‘painting’, a limp description in oil, which exposes the wide gap between decor and its more utilitarian history. 'The Vessel' takes us on a hunt for clues, pulling together evidence to suggest ways in which this peculiar floating structure might be understood. The ship, if we can call it that, begins to embody the secrecy of government and financial bureaucracies that take possession of it. Constantly reinvented, ‘The Vessel’ is uncannily pliable, sailing out of sight from one definition to another.
Mike Rickett’s project deftly exposes the dry imperatives shaping this ship’s existence. All that remains of HMP The Weare’s contribution to our national life is an insipid ‘painting’, a limp description in oil, which exposes the wide gap between decor and its more utilitarian history. 'The Vessel' takes us on a hunt for clues, pulling together evidence to suggest ways in which this peculiar floating structure might be understood. The ship, if we can call it that, begins to embody the secrecy of government and financial bureaucracies that take possession of it. Constantly reinvented, ‘The Vessel’ is uncannily pliable, sailing out of sight from one definition to another.
@Joshuaswhite thanks for the great review of #MikeRicketts The Vessel http://t.co/lyffcFnYgr
— WORKS|PROJECTS (@WORKSPROJECTS) August 12, 2013
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