An installation inspired by a story of abandonment and eventual restoration as part of the National Trust’s House of Bling at Tattershall Castle in Lincolnshire in August 2009.
Let Sleeping Dogs Lie was created for the private chamber on the third floor of Tattershall Castle and inspired by photographs of wooden packing cases containing fireplaces missing from the castle which were found at Tilbury Docks in 1912. The fireplaces, symbols of the castle’s romantic and once richly decorated past, were returned to Tattershall in triumphant procession.
“I could see the past of a castle, once richly decorated, entwined with traces of women trapped in towers – Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty and the Lady of Shalott – being delivered in boxes and, on opening, haunting the spaces with memories of their existence.”