Reviews: Re-form - Jude Wall

Re-form - Jude Wall
For five years, Jude Wall has been documenting the renovation of a Victorian prison building at Oxford Castle and now the renovation is complete. The building has become a resplendent hotel and on the end of one of the wings in an old circular tower, the new 03 Gallery has been opened. Jude Wall’s stimulating show of photographs is the first gallery exhibition. The well designed book published to accompany the exhibition has a central theme running through it; ghostly black and white images of the empty prison before renovation and colour images during and after the renovation, so that it reads as though it were an archaeological record. Most of the black and white images show light piercing through the cracks and crevices of the doors or windows leading to the outside world, as if they were going to implode through the sheer force of the light itself. Solid prison doors, swathed in shadow are transformed from melancholy, threatening symbols to connotations of hope, as the light attempts to penetrate the darkest corners. These symbolic metaphors appear throughout the body of work and the sharp contrast and excellent printing gives a clarity and depth to the images that is difficult to achieve in such almost dark conditions. As the stairs lead to the upper gallery, the images become more imposing and enter the world of present day reality; they morph into colour images and speak metaphorically of change and re-birth. Hanging against an old brick wall, the first big colour image shows a tactile wall with a drainpipe; brilliantly juxtaposed, this image is placed next to a drainpipe inside the gallery space and so the connections follow the roundness of the room in a cyclical way, until the prison is '‘re-formed'.	The photographs are excellently composed, with the glorious shafts of light that become the central focus in the majority of images. The light becomes a powerful metaphor commenting on freedom and incarceration, life and death. For centuries, executions did occur in this prison. Now people pay to sleep in these rooms, but only after the building was exorcised and blessed by a Bishop. This exhibition is both powerful and beautiful and the Victorians, who originally built the prison, would have definitely approved of these images, in the true tradition of awe-inspiring grandeur. And don’t forget to look out for the ghost . . . Lisa Fisher May 2006 www.o3gallery.co.uk
John Goto Green in Black and White Photo London 2007 Paris Photo 2006 London Polygon and the book Room Jude Wall - Re-form Welcome to Britain Derek Henderson - The Terrible Boredom of Paradise Empty Days by Paddy Summerfield Arles 2005 Boyd & Evans 2005 Frieze 2004 Javier Silva Meinal Arles 2004 Frieze 2003 Happy Vicitims by Kyoichi Tsuzuki
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