Absent but not Forgotten will be part of Be our Guest, Oriel Davies, Newtown 29/06/13 – 04/09/13

Who is this who is coming takes as a starting point the idea of the haunted B&B; many such establishments are rumoured to have a resident ghost and indeed, it is often a selling point to prospective visitors.

This new installation references the classic 1968 television play Whistle and I’ll Come to You directed by Jonathan Miller from the original ghost story written by MR James in 1904. It features the breakfast scene in a guest house whereby an empirically minded Cambridge Professor declares his scepticism regarding the supernatural but later comes to find himself prey to a terrifying otherworldly force. The play’s simple but haunting treatment conjures an atmospheric cautionary tale which warns against the rigidity of fixed academic opinions – as the professor illustrates with his self-satisfied corruption of Shakespeare’s quotation from Hamlet, “There are more things in philosophy than are dreamt of in heaven and earth…”*

To accompany the installation in the gallery we have gathered a number of stories about the ghostly goings on in and around Newtown, they will be available here

*”There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
  Hamlet (1.5.166-7)