Holy Hiatus : Ritual and Community in Public Art

In May 2008, five temporary art events by artists Alastair MacLennan, Maura Hazelden, Simon Whitehead, Anna Lucas and Yvonne Buchheim, took place in public spaces in Cardigan exploring themes of ritual, community and place. Holy Hiatus sought to examine the ways that artists can draw audiences into different, often unexpected experiences of place through ritual.

Ruth Jones Dr. Ruth Jones is an artist and curator based in West Wales. She has exhibited widely in the UK, and internationally in Ireland, Poland, USA, Spain and Quebec. She studied Fine Art at Liverpool John Moores University and The University of Ulster where she completed a Masters degree in 1997 and a practice led DPhil in 2002. In 2006 she was awarded an AHRC Fellowship in Creative and Performing Arts at the University of West England, Bristol exploring the relationships between ritual, place and community in lens based and public art. Recent projects include sleepers 2006, a film and public art project in conjunction with Oriel Mwldan, Cardigan; Vigil 2008, a video installation about Strumble Head lighthouse, and Cloddfa 2010, a video installation exploring the disused quarries at Porthgain, Pembrokeshire. Jones was a co-director of the Belfast based artist run gallery Catalyst Arts between 1997-99. She also co-curated the exhibition And the One Doesn't Stir without the Other for the Ormeau Baths Gallery in 2003 and edited the accompanying publication. She has published articles in a number of catalogues and journals, including 'Betwixt and Between' in no place I'm going to, 'Becoming-hysterical, becoming-animal, becoming-woman in The Horse Impressionists', in JVAP, 3:2 and 'Between a flashing star and a gravestone, sleepers, liminality and communal dreaming' in the AHRC funded website Imaginal Regions. www.ruthjonesart.co.uk Bobby Alexander Dr. Bobby C. Alexander is Associate Professor of Sociology and Public Policy and Political Economy in the School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences at The University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Alexander received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in Religious Studies; he was awarded a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology by Union Theological Seminary. Dr. Alexander is the author of two book monographs - originally published by the American Academy of Religion and currently in the catalogue of Oxford University Press. His publications in the fields of Religious Studies, social-scientific study of religion, and ritual studies, examine religion and social change. Dr. Alexander is co-author and co-editor of a forthcoming book based on a grant project funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education, which he served as Project Director. His current research focuses on performance of credibility in the legal process of political asylum, and the contribution of religion and ritual to change in gender roles for immigrant women. His research has been funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, CrossCurrents: Association for Religion and Intellectual Life, Overbrook Foundation, and American Academy of Religion. Dr. Alexander serves on the Board of Directors of Yale University's Institute of Sacred Music. Samantha Hurn Dr. Samantha Hurn is lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Wales, Lampeter. She specializes in Anthrozoology or the comparative study of human interactions with non-human animals in a wide range of cultural contexts. Her research interests include the different ways in which humans and non-human animals perceive and engage with their environments and each other, and the various forms of indirect, inter-species communication which occur during these interactions with particular reference to farming, hunting and outdoor leisure pursuits (e.g. horse riding). She is also concerned with investigating the ways in which animals are selectively bred in response to specific environmental conditions, or human aesthetic ideals and functional expectations of how an animal should 'perform'. Dr. Hurn's current research focuses on cross-cultural human relationships with 'charismatic mega fauna', notably big cats, wolves and primates. She is considering the ways in which practical engagements with these animals, who are