Notes from Wales Issue 1: Autumn 2014 | Page 31

In analysing the incredibly positive and overwhelming number of responses to the 2008 and 2010 events, Jones discovered that people in the communities in this part of Wales found solace and comfort when they were supported to create new rituals around liminal or threshold experiences in their lives. ‘Holy Hiatus’ offered scope to address that need. ’The Quick and the Dead’ (2014), therefore, the most recent project developed for ‘Holy Hiatus’, will explore birth and death rites. Jones is currently focusing in particular on forgotten or overlooked stories of death and birth rituals in Wales, through direct and experiential engagement with communities. As well as curating the programme of events for this project, which will include film screenings and workshops, Jones is also working on an acoustic contribution which has been developed in collaboration with acoustic singer Lou Laurens. This project will re-enact and reclaim the experience of a medical-technological labour using the human voice. Taking a CTG scan as a starting point, the bodily rhythms of contractions, blood pressure and a baby’s heart rate will be translated from a 10ft long paper trace into an acapella song with multiple voices. Profiled Ciara Healy is a writer, curator and book artist. Until recently she was the Head of Critical and Contextual Studies at The School of Creative Arts, Coleg Sir Gar/University of Wales Trinity Saint David and is now Lecturer in Art at the University of Reading. In 2011 she was one of three writers to be awarded Axisweb’s Developing Critical Writing on Contemporary Visual Arts Programme. Since then she’s written for Art Review, Circa and This is Tomorrow. She has also written many exhibition catalogue essays. Ruth Jones and Andrea Williams, Chwarel 2010, film installation with 5:1 surround sound Ciara is currently studying for a PhD at the Place Research Centre, University of the West of England, Bristol, with Dr. Iain Biggs under the research title: The Thin Perception: A proposal for a new curatorial approach in contemporary art. This visceral project, like Jones’s other work, consistently attempts to develop an awareness of the fecundity of the margin, of the latent possibilities of attending more closely to what Virginia Woolf once called ‘Earth Life’, in all its mildewed, abandoned and dynamic splendour. This is because Jones believes rituals to be conduits for the most transformative kinds of embodiments. ruthjonesart.co.uk > holyhiatus.co.uk > Partus, 2014 publicity image. Collaboration with sonic artist Lou Laurens. Ciara Healy, March 2014 NOTES FROM WALES | AUTUMN 2014 30