Father Christmas’ Grotto Journey (1995). This work interrogates the ritual spectacle of Father Christmas and the unquestioned acceptance of his presence within the confines of a grotto. The image of an old white-bearded man sitting in a cave-like structure, giving out gifts to children, has become a culturally sanctioned myth — embraced without question across much of the Christian world. When staged formally, it is seen as wholesome, magical, and safe.

For this work, I disrupted that setting by taking the grotto to the streets of Bristol. I constructed a mobile version of Father Christmas’ grotto and walked through the city in the rain for three hours, wearing a deliberately exaggerated and chaotic costume — a distorted, almost grotesque version of the traditional festive attire. This absurd figure, removed from the carefully staged environment of a shopping centre or holiday display, was met with discomfort, avoidance, and indifference. No one wanted to engage. People looked away.

The work reflects on how ritualised performances, when presented in expected spaces, are accepted no matter how strange or surreal they are. But when these same rituals are dislocated — when the spectacle is exposed for what it is — the illusion collapses, and the performer becomes a threat or a joke. Father Christmas’ Grotto Journey becomes a meditation on social conditioning, the boundaries of public acceptance, and the strange normalisation of seasonal myths that, when detached from their commercial or institutional framework, reveal their inherent absurdity.