Trace

You're handed a cardboard box and led to an armchair tucked under the stairs. On the wall to your right is a plate painted with the image of a football stadium. You sit down, settle in and open the box – inside is an iPod, a set of headphones and three letters: everything you need to create and experience Trace.

Running at just over 20 minutes – depending on how long it takes you to read its written elements and reflect on the recordings – Lisa Heledd Jones's audio installation is a touching elegy to a friend and a heartfelt documentary that looks back at a city's long-dwindled glory days, meditating on memory and how lost friends live on in the stories they told.

Jones created Trace to remember and recreate the local impact of Coventry City's 1987 FA Cup win. She also made it to commemorate the life of her friend Paul, for whom the team and its player Keith Houchen—who scored the match's winning goal—were mythically important. These two narrative strands are interwoven and underscored by the recorded sounds of an empty stadium, in which Jones sits us as she masterfully raises ghosts.

There's something incredibly caring about the way that Jones frames the piece. The instructive letters she writes us and her introductory recording about how to work the equipment set up a secure and lovingly crafted experience – reflecting the painstaking affection with which the artist blends narration and documentary footage to revisit that dizzying, life-affirming win. 

 

Trace times vary, 17-30 August Out of the Blue Drill Hall