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Ruth Ewan (Sculpture, 2012)Dreadnoughts Walks

Ruth Ewan

Shortlisted in 2012 for Sculpture

”Much of what I do is a learning process for myself as much as it is for others” says Ruth describing her methodical way of researching projects which often involves others in a shared journey of discovery.

Over the last five years Ruth’s work has deeply engaged with layered histories, people and places we overlook. “Often these histories are revealed to be latent with ideas with potential to alter perceptions of our place and time” she says. Since her move to East London in 2003 the accelerated tide of urban change has fuelled Ruth’s critical thinking of the city and remains central to Ruth’s practice as a place to work, live and be inspired. Several projects have engaged specifically with East London: Dreadnoughts, a series of public walking tours commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery focusing of key aspects of East London past and possible future; A LOCK IS A GATE, a concept album devised with Hackney’s Laburnum Boat Club’s young people distributed via Art on the Underground; Liberties of the Savoy, in which 200 teenagers from East London took over The Savoy hotel’s exclusive Lancaster Ballroom, absorbing social history, from the riots of 2011 to the Peasants Revolt of 1381 along the way.

Following on from her installation ‘Back to the Fields’ at Camden Arts Centre where the Republican Calendar (briefly introduced in post-revolutionary France) was brought to life, Ruth developed the idea of a botanical clock where through collaboration with nature, an alternative time zone is created and the tyranny of the mechanical and digital clock is momentarily escaped.