Trapped in a coffin with nothing to do

Cheetham

7 April — 22 April 2023

11:00am — 6:00pm

Jack Cheetham is an artist and educator. He was raised in Derbyshire, England, and has lived in Glasgow since 2012. Trapped in a coffin with nothing to do is an installation by artist Jack Cheetham. With the help of community and puppetry, the exhibition will speculate on visions of future hometowns, families, loves, demons, and pals. Puppets have a ‘life of their own’, and Cheetham is interested in how puppet play is used in theatrical and therapeutic contexts, and how it can be used as an alternative mode of communication through roleplay as a treatment for trauma.

The interactive installation is an imagining of a forgotten puppet show that takes place in and around ruined castle grounds, set in the year 2066, in the fictional town of Helldham, Anglandshireland. The puppet show has been abandoned due to a mass puppeteer revolt. The show is full of knackered puppets (to be reanimated by the exhibition’s audience, becoming the puppeteer), in which several characters together try to break up with the main character, the Castle.The exhibition will examine the potential and ongoing failures of its creators through the imagining of a certain consumer-driven fantasised moment in time.