RORY PILGRIM

_pink & green _is a new immersive commission that explores the emotional and ecological impact of the law. Following long-term engagement with communities based on the Isle of Portland – a small island in the English Channel, home to two architecturally dominating prisons, and a natural landscape under ecological threat – a new screenplay is brought to life through drawing, sound and light. Returning to early forms of cinema as a magic lantern, Pilgrim transforms the gallery into a film yet to be inscribed on screen.

A series of drawings tells a story of longing, belonging, and hope, set against a backdrop of Portland’s coastlines, quarries, and prisons. They are kicked into long grasses, painted by Pilgrim directly onto the gallery’s walls, which recognises their stories of compassion and growth as too often untold or hidden from view. Through collaboration with individuals with direct experience of the criminal justice system – young people from the island, men imprisoned at HMP Portland, and members of the prison’s education team from Weston College – Pilgrim’s new commission explores prevention, repair, transformation and growth.

Within a looping programme of light and sound, two pink and green orbs emerge – imaginative portals that have the potential to unlock new pathways. They dance across the gallery, searching for one another, at times pulsating and glowing while their melodies punctuate sounds of the island’s wind and waves. A soundtrack of new music and poetry plays throughout; composed by Pilgrim and the learners and facilitators at Weston College, and performed by singers and recorder players. Through collaborative processes of story-telling, drawing, and song-writing, stories are illuminated and voices heard.

pink & green imagines a new form of law based on transformation and restorative justice. Through working with others, Pilgrim makes tangible the emotional impact of legal systems on our lives, our environment and the world we inhabit, asking us to reconceive justice as a form of spiritual sanctuary.