The red telephone box is iconic in British culture, and although virtually defunct of its original use, it remains something that both fascinates and intrigues people.  There is something about this self-contained box that is inviting.  It is a private and isolated space, and in art fiction, has often been portrayed as a place where supernatural or eerie events can happen.  I have been looking at ways that the telephone box is visualised in a supernatural way as my own artwork incorporates the sinister into everyday situations.

One of the most intriguing pieces of research I have come across is a Spanish short film called La Cabinawhich was made for television in 1972.  A simple story about a man who enters a rigged phone box and becomes trapped inside it, the unfolding narrative sees him become both the object of sympathy and ridicule.  Unable to be freed from the box he is eventually taken away to a remote warehouse where he discovers to his horror that it is full of other trapped people, all in states of dying or already dead.  In this context, the phone booth is seen as something that is capable of entrapment, of terror, and eventually a place that transports you to an inevitable death.  There is something extremely claustrophobic about this film and compares the telephone box almost to that of your own coffin or death capsule.  It is this element of fear that I enjoy instilling in my own artwork

In contrast, Dan Soule’s short story written for children, The Lostling (2018) appears to do something different.  A homeless and unwanted boy sees the ringing telephone as a reason to go into the phone box, but he never leaves. Although the narrative doesn’t say it, it is presumed he dies in there or is already a ghostly presence, the final lines simply saying “The streetlamp stopped flickering. Beneath it, the old red phone box stood empty, its receiver swinging in the silent night”. The phone box becomes a metaphor for a place to die, the passageway to another place or stage of life.  For the audience, I think that the unseen or the unknown element to a piece of work is the most intriguing part; the viewer then has the invitation to imagine the outcome of the narrative.

Although not a red telephone box, the police box used throughout the television science fiction series Dr Who, possesses characteristics which transport its occupants to a skewed version of reality, and through different time dimensions.  One of the intrigues of the iconic blue Tardis is the contrast between its inside and its outside; one being regular and the other being fascinating.  Of course, the Tardis is entrenched in popular culture; its outside being something that is reminiscent of a time gone by, which could enable anyone to contact the emergency services and for police personnel to contact each other, but its interior is representative of a perceived future, capable of transporting you into another time and place. 

 This place between the comfort and memory of the past mixed with the uncertainty and wonder of the future present is somewhere that I believe to be a fascinating, yet eerie, position for engagement in artwork.