Dreams of a Winter Night

Pilgrim was commissioned by English Heritage along with fifteen other film and theatre artists, including Tilda Swinton and Mike Figgis, to create an installation in the historic Belsay Hall in Northumberland as part of the exhibition ‘Picture House.’ Each of the commissioned artists was invited to select different rooms in the empty stately home and create an installation inspired by the history of the house.

Conducting archival and historical research into the background of the house and its inhabitants, Pilgrim focused on finding ways of creating a sculptural installation with no live performance element that still conjured up a living ‘presence,’ and was concerned with finding ways to engage visitors who had come to look at a historic house and who were not well versed in performance language.

Taking the interior design of the building as a starting point and exploiting its architectural features, Pilgrim chose three interconnected bedrooms to ‘stage’ ‘Dreams of a Winter Night’, which expresses the hopes and fears of a young debutante, the night before her coming out party in the 1920s. The audience was invited to walk through the rooms and the central character and her ‘dream’ were evoked through the surreal juxtaposition of elements from the natural world, trees and earth with the constructed satins and silks of the bedroom. The cream satin ‘coming out’ dress was caught in the branches of the tree that was moved by a hidden breeze. Exploring the use of video, a male figure seen only fleetingly and projected images that were combined with material objects to create a sense of presence, the installation was open to the public over a six-month period. Accompanied by an illustrated publication, ‘Picture House’ was extensively reviewed, including The Telegraph and The Independent, both reproducing Pilgrim’s works.