Richard Dawson

While 2020 dealt in social realism with explorations of testy football matches, the fallacy of work-life balance and therapeutic forms of repetitive exercise, The Ruby Cord shakes off the limitations of so-called "real life", delving headlong into a (sort of) sci-fi world where human society has collapsed and morphed into something distinctly less solid. 

Written and conceived throughout the Covid-19 lockdowns, as the side effects of isolation and state-imposed inwardness affected millions around the world and the world got more difficult to comprehend, The Ruby Cord brings down a layer of fog over proceedings. In Dawson’s hands, the promise of a fragmented virtual future, full of fractured utopian visions becomes one of melancholy yearning and more strangely, hope. Support comes from Me Lost Me – led by Newcastle-based artist Jayne Dent.