Copyright Rachel Gadsden 2001-2007. No images or material on this site may be used or reproduced in any format without prior written permission from Rachel Gadsden.

Contemporary British Artist

Cane Hill Text

Background to Poetics of Decay

The derelict Cane Hill Asylum is the perfect metaphor for the human condition, the fragile nature of our lives. The decomposing building is a tangible representation of the decaying body. The deteriorating shell is sublimely beautiful and contains secrets that are exposed only slowly as the building disintegrates.

The site - hidden amongst the trees on the top of a hill in Coulsdon Surrey - is both macro and microcosm and in it are manifest all the contradictions and intricacies that we witness in our society. For 100 years at Cane Hill all the miseries and joys of asylum life were played out.

Walking along the corridors of Cane Hill 2 years ago I entered a ward and was confronted by the sight of two modern baths sitting side by side in the corner of the room. In a moment I was transported 3000 miles and to my childhood, to a long line where I stood with all the other sick children waiting for my fragile body to be scrubbed clean by a heavy handed Kuwaiti nurse.

I was seven, and felt very strongly the ignominy of being washed by them in public.

I looked down again at the Cane Hill baths. Adults too had had endured this little humiliation.

Cane Hill became my subject.

Initially I set out to look for any traces of life that might still exist within the confines of the security fence: perhaps in order to give life to or empower the lost souls of Cane Hill. But as I have both literally and metaphorically traipsed amongst the ruins, past the peeling damp walls of the Asylum, I can also bear witness to the incredible beauty of the crumbling site, and the way this alludes fleetingly to the love and laughter of the place. The world of Cane Hill represents both good and bad and so all the more disturbingly mirrors our daily lives here on the outside.

Photos, letters, and objects collected from the site and medical records accessed from the archive held at Croydon Library evidence deeply disturbed individuals but also people who were protected by the community of Cane Hill and were therefore able to live communal lives: sports days, summer fairs and merry-go-rounds.

The paintings and drawings set out to capture both physical and sociological decay. Hidden stories are trapped between the layers of dust and mortar. I attempt to allow the thoughts and emotions of lost individuals to be heard. But the building struggles to survive and its inevitable demise as the rot and decay takes over is a tangible evocation of our own impermanence.

And so in this context I see my canvases as artificial skeletons and with them attempt to abate that decay. As we are pulled into the narrative though, a complicated world emerges which is emotionally unsettling: for in the process of preserving, what was outside for the viewer must creep inside him.

As an artist it is my wish to deal with universals. I turn the spotlight onto what to all intents and purposes is, at least for now, a none functioning architectural site, and society has moved on. But what we can learn from the past is that we all have a responsibility to contribute to our community to make a difference for now and for future generations. To make our society inclusive, a place where each of its members has mutual support and respect.

“Anyone who cannot cope with life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate…….. but with his other hand he can jot down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees different and more things than the others: after all he is dead in his own lifetime and the real survivor”.

Franz Kafka diaries October 19th 1921.