A remarkable experience including a month in prison on remand lies behind Isabel Rock’s new exhibition at Hastings Contemporary, Things Fall Apart, The Centre Cannot Hold, running until March 15.
00:00Good afternoon. My name is Phil Hewitt, group arts editor at Sussex Newspapers. Now, there is a really significant exhibition at Hastings Contemporary running until March the 15th by Isabel Rock. Lovely to meet you, Isabel. It's called Things Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold, a bold new exhibition. It says, portraying a surreal post-human future shaped by the forces of climate collapse.
00:26And that is a big issue, isn't it? Your concern underlying this, your concern with the state of our climate.
00:35Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think more, it's a huge concern for everybody at the moment.
00:45And yeah, so this exhibition came out of some of my activism in that area.
00:51Um, because yeah, three, so three years ago, I climbed up a gantry on the M25 to, um, as part of a Just Stuff Oil protest.
01:00And our demand was no new oil and gas. Um, and, and that demand is now, um, government policy, which is great.
01:08Um, so, so that's great. But yeah, when they got me down from the gantry, um, I did get sent to prison for a month.
01:16Um, took me a little while to work out how to get bail.
01:19But, um, yeah, so, so there's all of these, so the prison aspect informs the exhibition, as does the climate crisis as well.
01:27Yeah, goodness. Um, what an experience. You were on remand for a month before eventually, after a long, long time, being found not guilty.
01:34And clearly, it was worth the, well, the trauma. There must have been quite something for you to go through this.
01:42Yeah, I mean, I guess when anyone takes, um, an action like this, you have to weigh up the sort of personal risk to yourself.
01:49And, and, um, whether you have enough of a safety net to sort of cushion the impacts of, of these actions.
01:57Um, I knew, I knew that, um, my family was very supportive and that if I did get sent to prison, I wouldn't come out and be homeless.
02:05Um, that I could sort of pick up work where I left off.
02:08Um, so, so I was, you know, and I, I don't have any children, but I wanted to do this for my niece and nephew who were really important to me.
02:16Um, and also for, yeah, for all of the young people and the younger generations, it just seemed like a really, really important thing to do.
02:24And I just want to stand up, stand up to the powers that be.
02:27And, um, I think, I feel like there's not, there's this question of can art change the world?
02:34And I, I'm not sure that it can, and I don't think it can instigate the changes that we need in terms of the climate crisis.
02:43I don't think it can do that.
02:45However, I do think that collective action can change the world.
02:49Um, so by doing, by doing my art practice and doing the activism, I can sort of, um, sort of contribute something, I guess.
02:57And one probably almost unsawed upshot of this is that, as you say, you feel that you are a better person for these, these experiences.
03:06You've had a month on remand, a long wait for trial, the agony of the trial, et cetera.
03:10It's made you a better person.
03:13Um, yeah, absolutely.
03:15I mean, yeah, I think I'm, I guess I'm not so scared of the world anymore.
03:20I think, well, I've been in prison.
03:21I can deal with that.
03:22I can deal with anything.
03:23Um, and yeah, it was a really, it was really eyeopening to learn about how the justice system works.
03:33Um, it was amazing to meet the people in prison and hear their stories, um, and heartbreaking as well.
03:40Um, well, yeah, while I was in there, I did a lot of drawing, um, on anything that I could find with like a little biro on the scrap of a bit of paper.
03:48Um, and people would see me drawing and this sort of broke the ice.
03:52It would be, um, a lot of people are quite wary of you when you first go in and they don't know if you're going to be friend or foe, as it were.
03:59Um, so, so yeah, doing these drawings sort of broke the ice and I got to chat to people and hear their stories and stuff.
04:06And, and that was really, um, really meaningful to me.
04:10Yeah.
04:11Congratulations.
04:12It sounds a remarkable exhibition.
04:14It's Isabel Rock, Things Fall Apart, The Centre Cannot Hold, Hastings Contemporary Until March the 15th.
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