On entering Kieren Reed’s ‘Rite of Passage’ exhibition, visitors find that the space has been transformed into a working boat shed. Kieren’s work stems from questions he has with identity and personal heritage as well as issues of social and political culture. Inspired by myths, traditional stories, and documentation of traditions and folk laws which speak of mystical voyages to promised lands, Kieren is simulating the traditions of making craft objects and the use of historic techniques to build a traditional seafaring ‘skin’ boat – a Curragh, which will be completed in this specially readapted gallery space. The Curragh is intended to act to develop a rhetoric (language) from which Kieren will develop other works, and will consider the relationship that he has with the experience of both making and using the boat and the communication this creates with the audience.

The work is also about enabling the audience to participate though mechanisms, either by taking part in ‘activities’ such a boat building, or by offering technical displays or literature which could assist in self-building projects. The notion of ‘rite of passage’ and where this happens within contemporary culture, is also of interest as well as the consideration of the semiotics/tools that now form part of this type of ceremonial exchange.

Alongside the Curragh, the exhibition includes Kieren’s other artworks – paintings, drawings, small sculptures and prints relating to ‘rites of passage’ and self building as well as an education, resource and archive area to include books, models, drawings, films, and objects of nautical interest as well as information about tide times, boat building, shipping and weather reports, and interesting facts about the Island’s boating activities and history; as well as an area designated for the audience to create their own paintings.

The work and the collections make direct reference to Kieren’s ancestral history in Ireland, his upbringing in the fishing town of Hastings and his connections to the Isle of Wight and blurs the connections between these important places in his life.

In the rear annex gallery is a curated collection of artists who consider similar themes and concepts to his own. Many of the works in this space are new pieces made in response to ideas of rites of passage and self-building. Others have been included to directly contextualise Kieren’s practice within wider considerations and many of which have greatly influenced his work and the larger exhibition as a whole.

The adjacent Learning Curve gallery offers visitors the opportunity to consider their own ‘Rite of Passage’ by creating boats from paper. In varying degrees of difficultly from the basic newspaper style boats reminiscent of childhood, to more complex folded and stuck sailing boats, gallery visitors will be asked to display their paper boats in the gallery building up to a full fleet.

The highlight of the project will be a concluding ‘Regatta’ launch event, during which, the Curragh will be taken out of the gallery, down to the quay and rowed/sailed in the direction of the sea. This will complete the project and the rite of passage.

The Curragh’s first journey will be photographically documented and the results will be shown in the gallery for the final week of the exhibition.

The exhibition can be experienced on a variety of different levels. It is very important that through the encouragement of participation within this project there will be a sense of ownership and authorship gained by those who experience the project on a variety of levels from collaborating directly by making a boat and taking part in the regatta, to meeting and talking with Kieren whilst he works on the curragh, watching it come together or by sharing, taking or researching information and knowledge from the resource which could be useful to them later.

Kieren is very much interested in the idea of collaboration as a whole and in the blurred boundaries as to when and where it happens, both with the audience and between other artists, be it directly or indirectly. He sees his practice as creating a space for the exchange of information and the initiation of discussion, placing him as the artist at the fulcrum point within a discourse.

Collaborative