Rarely visited rooms house new Wollaton Hall exhibition

The exhibition, in the magnificent rooftop Prospect Room offers views across the surrounding park and city beyond.

Artists Caroline Broadhead, Nic Sandiland and Angela Woodhouse have taken inspiration from the building’s history and inhabitants, exploring such details as 17th century embroidered costume belonging to the Middleton family who once lived in the Hall, and the doors that separated the kitchens and servants’ quarters from the family rooms upstairs.

Sandiland and Woodhouse have worked with image, sound, and movement to create a series of intimate film works that are integrated with Broadhead’s reinvented found objects. All these elements find synergy in this atmospheric installation.

The three artists describe the installation: “Images will shift from the open landscape to the enclosed and restricted spaces in which the servants were confined, indicating the labours and life that differentiated the people, their roles and their position in the 17th century household.”

There are two ways to visit the exhibition. Visitors can book on to one of the special talk and view events, taking place between 1pm and 3pm every Wednesday and Saturday between March 8 and the close of the exhibition on May 1. Each ‘Talk and View’ will be conducted by a Nottingham-based artist or performer, lasting approximately 45 minutes, including time to view the work. Talks are £3 per person, bookings can be made in advance via www.wollatonhall.org.uk/close-distance.

Close Distance can also be seen during Wollaton’s existing Prospect Room tours, taking place at 12 noon and 2pm daily (£5 per person). The Prospect Room is only accessible via a spiral staircase and so Illuminate, Nottingham Museums’ Young Arts Collective, have made a short film that documents the making of Close Distance. This will be shown on the ground floor of the Hall, which is fully accessible and runs throughout the exhibition.