An Impossible Sound

An Impossible Sound is conceived as the third installment of pink & green, a long-term project by Rory Pilgrim that will culminate in his forthcoming first feature film of the same title. Presented at Vleeshal, the exhibition unfolds with a new, immersive environment that foregrounds the choices faced by young people growing up in regional areas.

The project is grounded in the voices and landscapes of the Isle of Portland, a small limestone island linked to the Dorset coast by Chesil Beach. Portland’s geology has long played a defining role in its identity: for centuries, the island’s limestone has been quarried and used to build some of Britain’s most recognisable landmarks such as the Tower of London. At the same time, this landscape bears the marks of these environmental extractions, alongside the presence of carceral infrastructures. Portland is home to two prisons, including HMP/YOI Portland, and was formerly the site of the prison barge HMP Weare. The labour of imprisoned people has historically helped shape the island’s terrain, with many of its quarries first worked by prisoners who were brought there in 1848 to construct the 2.84-mile-long harbour breakwater.

Working closely with island residents over several years—including young people living on the island and men imprisoned at HMP/YOI Portland—Pilgrim traces how individual lives are shaped by legal systems, environmental conditions and inherited social structures. Central to the project is a collaborative approach developed with Elizabeth Graham in which people are not simply subjects of representation but active contributors to the work’s development. Through workshops, writing sessions, collective song-making and ongoing dialogue, the project has unfolded slowly, allowing relationships and trust to develop over time.

Within contexts marked by institutional constraint and unequal power relations, Pilgrim’s process has involved developing particular structures of care that enable collaboration to take place. Working alongside young people, educators, support staff and community organisations, these frameworks emphasise listening, consent and shared authorship. Spaces for reflection and collective discussion are integral to the artistic process, making space for people to shape the stories, lyrics and sonic textures that form the foundation of the project. In this way, the creative process becomes inseparable from the social conditions that sustain it, foregrounding care and collaboration as both method and subject.

At the heart of An Impossible Sound is the music score to the forthcoming film. Exploring the musical loop, the exhibition’s title refers to a moment in which a cycle of harm might be interrupted, offering the possibility of renewal and transformation. Particular attention is given to the experience of teenagers growing up on the island and asking themselves the question of what it means to stay or leave. Centred within the exhibition, two cars stand nose to nose with their doors open wide. Each car carries an unfolding audio journey, narrated by a series of passengers including teenagers and film protagonists Chloe Peplow and Ellia Webb. These personal songs—alongside the voice of the island itself, embodied by singer Robyn Haddon—function both as a road-trip playlist and as contemporary vespers: a shared, reflective ritual. Together with drawing, video fragments and polaroid photographs, the exhibition invites audiences to tune into the island as a microcosm of the wider world, and to listen closely for the fragile moments where change might begin.

Events

3 May

Free entrance

9 am – 3 pm 

3 May

Free guided tour

10 am – 2 pm 

23 May

Concert Rory Pilgrim

2 – 3:30 pm 

7 June

Free entrance

9 am – 3 pm 

7 June

Free guided tour

10 am – 2 pm