ARTISTS TALKING

Institutional spaces and the remnants of the past that remain within them form the basis for Patricia MacKinnon-Day's work. From this foundation she creates installations that re-present facets of those spaces and through them elements of the nature of memory and loss that they contain. This exhibition is based on studies of the former eighteenth century workhouse and hospital of Brynhyfryd, a massive brick structure that rises from the Severn valley outside Montgomery. The site is very close to the Wales/England border, appropriately in one sense, as the two installations that comprise this exhibition also hover on the borderlines of a disappearing history.

In the first installation, Enclosure, tall and narrow perspex panels with narrow gaps between them are suspended from the ceiling of the gallery and fixed to the floor creating a room within a room. Each panel is printed in a sickly yellow with a floral image derived from old vinyl wallpaper found in one of the rooms at Brynhyfryd. The precision and repetition of the panels and the pattern create a sense of the claustrophobic, and yet the transparency that allows the blending of artificial and natural light creates an equal and conflicting sense of airiness and space. The exterior surface of the panels is matt, while the interior surface is reflective: the impressions gained from entering the installation (via two narrow gaps at diagonally opposite corners) are very different from those gained from walking around the outside. The transparency of the panels also allows for the partially obscured forms of other visitors to be seen as they move around: this echoes the lack of privacy, even within walled rooms, that characterised old institutions. There is a quiet irony in that visitors may enter and leave the space at will from within the institution that is the gallery, a freedom denied to the occupants of the former institution that provided the starting point for this reflective and melancholy installation.

Sovereign Gift, the second installation, provokes a meditation on the lingering remnants of the now lost personal histories of those who were once resident in Brynhyfryd. One hundred units line the walls of the second gallery, fixed at belly height and evenly spaced. Each unit is formed from a square of glass with polished edges, held in place by metal clamps, each bearing an etched forename and the lead cast of a cake of soap bearing the royal cipher. These are derived from the named soap-dishes that MacKinnon-Day found in a bathroom at Brynhyfryd and the bars of institutional soap that once filled them. The precision of the units repeats the precision of institutional regulation: the shadows and reflections thrown by the single spotlight that illuminates each wall hint at the complexities of the multiple human histories that the names represent. The soaps that symbolise the daily cleansing of face and body are now cast in lead, potentially poisonous and redolent of the weight of history. The names glow silently in the dim light, an elegiac murmur of unknown distant memories. There is the sense that somehow, however desperate the situations of the named individuals might have become, shreds of humanity remain.

MacKinnon-Day has a notable record of thought-provoking and quietly authoritative work that deserves quiet contemplation. These new installations add considerably to that record, and offer proof that she is an artist whose art, working as it does from the past to the present, will be an important part of the re-definition of the visual arts in the coming century.