The Icon Gallery is the ideal setting for Sally Kettlestone’s latest exhibition, ‘Casting Shadows’. Situated in a discrete crook of Shorditch the building has all the utilitarian reverence of a morgue. Barrel vaulted ceilings and restrained pools of light act as the perfect conduit for viewer as witness. At first this exhibition appears to be a departure from Kettlestone’s previous work, but dig a little deeper and the familial themes continue.
Born in Great Wickham village, into an age bridging post war Britain and the modern scientific age, Kettlestone trained at Colchester and Chelsea School of Art. Using her childhood as plot, she employs memory, scale and text to depict her imaginative childhood. Her first major exhibition ‘Listening In’ The Icon Gallery 1987, was an installation of set pieces from a family home. Memorable for the giant scale of the table laid for high tea, a cake stand with oversized Battenberg cake, fish paste sandwiches and giant cup cakes. As viewers, we were never certain whether we were being manipulated or co-opted; players in this game of childish make believe. Visitors were invited to sit cross-legged under the massive table, partly hidden by the table cloth listening in to the voice of a mother trading gossip with a neighbour, while pepper pots on the animated wallpaper engaged in conversations with the dancing cruet set - cleverly inviting our own immature response and eavesdropping on a childhood where in a time of commodification domestic wares become disturbing shrines.
The installations continued, with the room sets of bric-a-brac. ’Dikkoglimmer’ (Romany for mirror) 1994 Sagacho Exhibit Space Tokyo. Kitsch in nature, but hinting at a disturbing confusion of identity, visitors became engulfed in room sets who, like their fairground counterparts, distorted reality with confusing mirrors for doorways. Stifling and claustrophobic, at times escape seemed impossible. Relics, beaded curtains and etched mirrors were inspired by Kettlestone’s own relationship to the Gypsies encamped in her childhood memory. Kettlestone has a sharp intelligence where reality and fiction blur.
Half remembered fragments are drawn together; there is the echo of a narrative. A strand which temps us to advance theories, leap to conclusions, but this dialogue is cut short. Aunty Peggy and her mother are interrupted by chattering, animated utensils, like some dire end of the pier animatronics they burst into familiar period ditties: ‘How much is that doggy in the window’, ‘All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth’. Always these overlapping interjections at the instant of fascinating conspiracy. We crane to hear, a child is missing and domestic violence is hinted at. Hidden, as it would have been, in a period when walking into a door was the accepted explanation for a black eye.
In ‘Casting Shadows’ we enter a forest of the mind. We are led to via Gyspy trail signs, into a fully realised copse where a series of discreet glass pavers lead us on. Oddly muted, and with her usual artifice all but abandoned, it is replaced by delicacy and restraint. The birds nests are constructed in bronze and silver strips, along with yarns and wools strips of fabric and torn paper letters. The interplay between dark and light makes for unnerving discoveries. We discover hidden mummified artefacts, evidence of archaeology; a life vitrified.
On the ground the trails signs lull us, seduced by the beauty of each seeded grain suspended in creamy wax. caught in the trees the artefacts as clues a Sindy doll's head, burnt books and poignantly a badge, ‘Casualties Union’, hinting at childhood despair and emerging shapes begin to invite a more sinister analysis. Tallow has seeped from bones, unchious fluid leaches macabre evidence. An ochre of bloody depth, whose decrepit edges lie greened, sits scarified by livid hues from the passing spores of decay.
Of course Kettlestone was never about to abandon her autobiographical approach, but in many ways this forest journey is more intriguing. What are we being asked to observe here, an incident? A crime scene? There is text, snatches of it torn from burnt scraps, and a visual narrative. The hiding of it is not cognisant Kettlestone herself is unsure, uncertain whether she any more than the rest of us, can rely on memory for truth. Is she excavating a relics of the unconscious? I doubt it. Part is uncovered, above ground, what is buried here? Is this mystery based in a real childhood incident as she has implied? This is where the ambiguity lurks, hidden; evading even Kettlestone’s persuasive hectoring.
We are haunted by the uncomfortable notion that what we sifting through is not a memory, but evidence, but what of provenance? Kettlestone alludes, but never commits, the puzzle is unsolved, the ugly drama is still to play out and the lost child remains unfound.