The Wraiths of Golgonooza

About

The Wraiths are artist-curators: Jill Laudet and Sarah Cliff

As part of an ongoing project on Resist Rebuild, Jill Laudet re-presents Blake’s concept of the eternal struggle to resist, re-imagine and rebuild a life-sustaining  city for all, in direct rejection of the contemporary alienating and oppressive power complex. Improvising with the building materials of this mythical Golgonooza: metals, clay and stone,  and with the found or discarded, Laudet creates a space, guarded by Blake’s ’terrible’ and ‘wondrous’ Guardians, in which we might imagine alternatives. 

Through the assemblage of repeated images, ornate colonial patterning, opulent textiles, melancholy words, clay, metal, stone and wood, Cliff explores the “labyrinth of woe” which threatens when the actions of the powerful become irrational, self-justifying and inhuman. Cliff seeks signposts for Blake’s Golgonooza, hoping to find a release from cruel oppression for the dispossessed poor; the criminal; the woman; the foreigner; and all who seek a place of unity.