Matt’s Gallery has been open for four weeks in its new home in Bermondsey.  It’s on the primarily residential Decima Street, SE1 but only a stones throw from Bermondsey Street and Borough High Street.

Leah Capaldi’s Lay Down is the opening show here and is a site specific installation, part film, part performance. I sit on a dusty floor and watch a cowboy in an idyllic landscape tame his horse. She has already been saddled but this is a ‘Lay Down’; a next step in the relationship; an exploration of power and trust; him and her. And then there is him. This performer whose legs appear through two holes in the second screen. These legs speak to control, the horse’s leg is tied, she doesn’t have control; the legs speak to gender, a man can control his legs yet here he doesn’t. He’s clearly been told to sit still. he’s the performer and he’s under instructions. The horse bucks and resists. The man stays still. The cowboy calmly persists. Slowly the horse relents, the man moves his location and climbs to where he can put his arm through a hole in the first screen; it dangles. The horse lies down; the cowboy strokes the horse in her moment of surrender. The man also strokes the horse and then, in the next frame, strokes the cowboy – its weird, but good.  He is intruding on the emotional moment in a relationship but then so is the camera operative and so are we.

Leah Capaldi writes eloquently about her own work. She was awarded the The Arts Foundation Yoma Sasburg Sculpture Fellowship and travelled to America for 3 months.  She spent time in the Nevada deserts and Utah experiencing Land art and the vast space.  She met the cowboy/horse whisperer West Taylor and spent time with him and his mustangs, having learned to ride western style in the UK before traveling out. She writes ‘For West to lay Cassidy down he has to surrender his ego and she must surrender her instinct. A Lay Down helps the horse become safer, less anxious, and more focused.  It also helps to cement a bond between horse and rider so that they can trust each other.  Once you start a Lay Down you have to see it through.’

I had to see it through as well.