Sounds Like Her - Gender, Sound Art and Sonic Cultures at York Art Gallery

'Curated by Christine Eyene, known for her enquiry into feminist art and her research on sound art from an African perspective – Sounds Like Her sets out to broaden existing approaches to sound art and challenge the Eurocentric and patriarchal frameworks that have informed the discourse on sound art practice and continue to dominate the mainstream today.

The project brings together six women artists, each exploring sound as a medium or subject matter: Ain Bailey, Sonia Boyce OBE RA, Linda O’Keeffe, Christine Sun Kim, Madeleine Mbida and Magda Stawarska-Beavan.

Collectively the selected works represent sound in the broadest sense, exploring voice, noise, organic and synthetic sounds, rhythmic patterns, sonic structures and visual materialisation of sound. The result is a varied exhibition of mixed media bringing together audio, immersive installation, painting, print, drawing and video.'

Having read about Ain Bailey's The Pitch Sisters, I was disappointed not to experience the work within the exhibition. The work, in part, 'responds to the line: "The preferred pitch of a woman's voice is A flat below middle C" from the 1985 film, Peggy and Fred in Hell: The Prologue. The work seeks to present what a female sonic universe would sound like if women's voices indeed vocally hung around an A flat below middle C. The installation is a circular layout of speakers playing the voices of 46 women performing the note.' I managed to find a link to a stereo recording of the work on the British Music Collection website. 

https://britishmusiccollection.org.uk/composer/ain-bailey

I must admit that the element of the exhibition that I was most attracted to was the way in which the walls had been painted and the design of the catalogue. The colour choice could be said to be rather feminine, and given the title of the exhibition, GENDER, Sound Art & Sonic Cultures, I was reminded of one aspect of my Undergraduate dissertation which commented on how the context affects the reading of the work. In this context, the work is displayed in a gallery with delicate pastel shades - is this trying to emphasise the femininity of the work?