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? 

Displaying ceramic buttons

I appreciated the way that the ceramic buttons were displayed at Centre for Ceramic Art (CoCA) in York Art Gallery. 

Sara Moorhouse in Centre for Ceramic Art (CoCA) at York Art Gallery

The first work I encountered in the Centre for Ceramic Art (CoCA) at York Art Gallery was Arable Landscape: the assemblage by Sara Moorhouse. I was immediately drawn to the collection by Sara's choices of colour and the layered design.



"The wall sculpture refers to a wide open arable landscape, where colours connect across the dominant hues of red, green and blue to represent different shapes and spaces.

The pieces are hand thrown and turned, the movement of the wheel often reflected in the slight asymmetry of the form. The lines are applied by returning the bisque fired bowl to the wheel and painted with ceramic colour by hand. A matt glaze is then applied to stabilize and enhance the coloured surface."

http://saramoorhouse.com/

Artists as curators on Front Row

Monday's edition of Front Row featured a discussion about artists curating exhibitions.

This coincides with the opening of two exhibitions curated by artists, namely Shonky : The Aesthetics of Awkwardness at The Mac, Belfast and Paul Nash & the Uncanny Landscape at York Art Gallery.

John Stezaker has curated Paul Nash & the Uncanny Landscape at York Art Gallery, an exhibition which in which Paul Nash’s groundbreaking inter-war landscapes which transformed the genre of British landscape painting are exhibited along with works by Stezaker.

In Shonky : The Aesthetics of Awkwardness, the artist John Walter has brought together international artists and architects to explore the nature of visual awkwardness.

John Walter and Jill Constantine, curator and Head of the Art Council Collection reflected on what artists can bring to the curation of an exhibition.

When asked how the process of curating for an artist is different to that of a curator, Jill Constantine remarked that artists tend to adopt an intuitive, immediate, emotional and personal approach whereas curators tend to look for thematic and interpretative material and do a lot of research in order to contextualise.

John Walter recognised that as an artist, he can use his practice as the starting point to make the exhibition, perhaps choosing to to show out of fashion or less popular work. He explained that in the current exhibition at The Mac, Belfast he used the fourteen artists in the show to make a bigger picture. It was encouraging to hear Jill Constantine speak so positively about artists curating exhibitions. She was quick to dismiss the idea that artists that curate make random choices, and did not think that they undermined the position of curators.



To listen to the programme visit:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09cvwx7