Rory Pilgrim: An Impossible Sound

Guest-curator: Martha Jager

An Impossible Sound is conceived as the third installment of pink & green, a long-term project by Rory Pilgrim that will culminate in his forthcoming first feature film of the same title. Presented at Vleeshal Center for Contemporary Art, the exhibition unfolds with a new, immersive environment that foregrounds the choices faced by young people in regional areas.

The project is rooted in the voices and landscapes of the Isle of Portland, a small island in the English Channel marked by two prisons and by ecological damage caused by decades of limestone quarrying. Working closely with island residents over several years—young people and men incarcerated at HMP Portland—Pilgrim traces how individual lives are shaped by legal systems, environmental conditions, and inherited social structures. 

At the heart of An Impossible Sound is the music score to the forthcoming film. Exploring the musical loop, the exhibition's title refers to a moment in which a cycle of harm can potentially be broken, offering the possibility of renewal and transformation. Particular attention is given to the experience of teenagers growing up on the island. An Impossible Sound asks what it means to stay, what it costs to leave, and whether cycles of limitation can be transformed without the requirement of departure.

Centered in the exhibition, two cars stand nose to nose with their doors open wide. Each car carries an unfolding audio journey, narrated by a series of passengers including teenagers and film protagonists Chloe Peplow and Ellia Webb. These personal songs - along with the voice of the island itself embodied by singer Robyn Haddon - function both as a road-trip playlist and as contemporary vespers: a shared, reflective ritual. Together with drawing, video fragments and polaroid photographs—the exhibition invites audiences to tune into the island as a microcosm of the wider world, and to the fragile moments where change might begin.

Vleeshal welcomes Pilgrim’s focus on life for young people in a regional peninsula, and will explore connections with young people from Zeeland. The exhibition will feature a number of special programs including a public concert welcoming the film’s protagonists Chloe and Elia, a lecture by professor Sarah de Lange “Young and Ambitious? Young and Futureless?,”and a finnissage developed in collaboration with the participants of Vleeshal’s “Team V“ talent-development program, supported by Provincie Zeeland.

Rory Pilgrim (Bristol, 1988) works in a wide range of media including songwriting, composing music, film, music video, text, drawing and live performances. Centred on emancipatory concerns, Pilgrim aims to challenge the nature of how we come together, speak, listen and strive for social change through sharing and voicing personal experience. Strongly influenced by the origins of activist, feminist and socially engaged art, Pilgrim works with others through different methods of dialogue, collaboration and workshops.

pink & green is a long-term project and forthcoming feature film by Rory Pilgrim produced by SMARTHOUSE and co-produced by Tyke Films. The feature film is the result of a commission by Chisenhale Gallery and Vleeshal Center for Contemporary Art. The long-term project is produced by Elizabeth Graham.

Events
Opening: April 4, 3–5pm

Lecture: April 17, 6:15–10pm
“Young and Ambitious? Young and Futureless?” by professor Sarah de Lange
Old city hall of Middelburg

Concert: May 23, 4–5:30pm

Finnisage: June 6, 2pm
Developed in collaboration with the participants of Vleeshal’s “Team V” talent-development program