Rory Pilgrim: pink & green

Rory Pilgrim redefines how we come together and strive for social change. Influenced by activist, feminist and social practices, Pilgrim works with others, through long-term dialogue and collaboration, to share and voice personal experience across music, film, drawing, and performance.

pink & green is a new immersive commission, part of a longer term project, that explores the emotional and ecological impact of the law. Following long-term and ongoing engagement with communities based on the Isle of Portland—a small island in the English Channel, home to two architecturally dominating prisons, and a natural landscape under ecological threat—a new screenplay is brought to life through drawing, sound and light. Returning to early forms of cinema as a magic lantern, Pilgrim transforms the gallery into a film yet to be inscribed on screen.

A series of drawings tells a story of longing, belonging, and hope, set against a backdrop of Portland’s coastlines, quarries and prisons. They are kicked into long grasses, painted by Pilgrim directly onto the gallery’s walls, which recognises their stories of compassion and growth as too often untold or hidden from view. Through collaboration with individuals with direct experience of the criminal justice system—young people from the island, men imprisoned at HMP Portland, members of the prison’s education team from Weston College, and collaborators futher afield—Pilgrim’s new commission explores prevention, repair, transformation, and growth.  

Within a looping programme of light and sound, two pink and green orbs emerge—imaginative portals that have the potential to unlock new pathways. They dance across the gallery, searching for one another, at times pulsating and glowing while their melodies punctuate sounds of the island’s wind and waves. A soundtrack of new music and poetry plays throughout; composed by Pilgrim and the learners and facilitators at Weston College, and performed by singers and recorder players. Through collaborative processes of story-telling, drawing, and song-writing, stories are illuminated and voices heard.

pink & green imagines a new form of law based on transformation and restorative justice. Through working with others, Pilgrim makes tangible the emotional impact of legal systems on our lives, our environment and the world we inhabit, asking us to reconceive justice as a form of spiritual sanctuary.

Talks and events
As part of the commissioning process, a programme of talks and events has been devised in collaboration with Rory Pilgrim, spanning the duration of the exhibition.

Talk
Saturday, June 8, 2–4pm
A peer-led forum exploring sustainable practice for artists and educators working in the margins of the education and criminal justice system.

Tour
Saturday, June 15, 11am–12pm
A walkthrough of pink & green with Asymmetry Curatorial Research Fellow Rachel Be-Yun Wang.

Performance
Thursday, July 18, 7:30–9pm
An evening of words and live music with Rory Pilgrim, Robyn Haddon, and Carina Murray, as part of pink & green.

All events are free to attend, but booking is essential. Please visit chisenhale.eventbrite.co.uk.

We are committed to ensuring our events are accessible for all. Please contact mail [​at​] chisenhale.org.uk to discuss any access needs. We will endeavour to meet all requests where possible. Please be advised that requests should be made two weeks in advance of the event.

Biography
Rory Pilgrim lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and the Isle of Portland, UK. Selected exhibitions include: Turner Prize 2023, Towner Eastbourne, Eastbourne (2023), RAFTS: Live, Cadogan Hall, Serpentine Galleries, London (2022); Radio Ballads, Serpentine Gallery, London (2022); HOP to HOPE, Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art (WAM), Turku (2022); Where the Tide Takes Us, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig (2021); The Undercurrent, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2020). Selected screenings and performances include: Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul (2023); Screening Rights Film Festival, Coventry (2023); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2023); MoMA, New York (2022); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2021); Glasgow Film Festival (2020); Images Festival, Toronto (2019); and Transmediale Festival, HKW, Berlin (2019). Pilgrim was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2023, and was the winner of the Prix de Rome in 2019. 

pink & green is commissioned and produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London, developed as part of a feature film commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, London, and Vleeshal Center for Contemporary Art, Middelburg. The long-term project is produced by Elizabeth Graham, and the feature film produced by SMARTHOUSE, supported by De Verbeelding—a collaboration between the Mondriaan Fund and the Netherlands Film Fund.

Lead supporters: Mondriaan Fund and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

With additional support from the Chisenhale Gallery Commissions Fund and Maureen Paley. 

Chisenhale Gallery’s Schools’ Programme 2024 is made possible through the generosity of Goodman Gallery and Freelands Foundation.

The 2023–24 Asymmetry Curatorial Research Fellow is hosted by Chisenhale Gallery.

Chisenhale Gallery
Registered charity number: 1026175