The second exhibition I did in a week was for ‘Squaremile’ at Bridewell Gallery in Liverpool.
The Gallery was once an old Police Station/Prison hence the name and the brief was to respond to any place within one square mile of the gallery.
Exactly 0.94 miles away as the crow flies stands a tiny tower in Everton Park that was once a prison, it’s now most commonly known as part of the logo for Everton Football Club.
I wanted to recreate the small prison inside the Bridewell Gallery, a bridewell within a Bridewell. It is made entirely from out of date Law Books donated by Liverpool Law School (also within the square mile)
I want viewers to go inside the small structure, stooping to enter the narrow door and feel uncomfortable, as you would in an actual jail cell.
St Bride’s Well
Law Books and Wooden supports
bridewell (ˈbraɪdˌwɛl, -wəl)
— n
a house of correction; jail, esp for minor offences
[C16: after Bridewell (originally, St Bride’s Well ), a house of correction in London]
This work represents the diminutive Everton Tower or The Roundhouse as it’s known locally, built in 1787 to ‘incarcerate wrong do-er’s’ and to remember those who received little or no education in days gone by which is perhaps why they became ‘wrong doer’s’.
