Phill Wilson-Perkin with Audio from John Hughes, Adam Laschinger, The London Sound Survey, Anne Robinson and Samantha Taylor.
16 September - 1 October 2017
Preview 14 September 6-9pm
Gallery Open Sat-Sun 12-6pm
all other times by appointment
.....................................................................
Eight concrete forms are linked together by eight pairs of headphones. All are joined to the same amplifier by garishly coloured cables. The headphones having been set into the wet cement, have become inseparable from the forms. They play a soundtrack to an animation; a version of Joseph Gandys watercolour of a ruinous Bank of England. The audio is a collection of field recordings, ranging from seismic rumbling to domestic and industrial machinery. The headphones channel the sounds, excluding all others and sending waves into the concrete forms. Microscopicaly reshaping them, recording the sound anew. Solidifying the noise. Permanently archiving the intonations of a culture that headphones would normally work to exclude [blocking the din of contemporary life, an audial opiate for the masses]. Would burying these concrete forms below ground preserve their records? On a shelf stands a fossil-like form. Imagined eons of wear have removed its headphones leaving shell-like impressions. This is a monument to cultures that are denied access to permanence.
Liquid luminous chalk has emulsified on newspaper adverts. Shapes drawn as if broadcasting from the headphones. The luminosity of the chalk apes the sounds that would radiate from the earbuds. As with the works above, the ethereal is transformed into stone, albeit a crumbling, cracking, fragile stone.
.....................................................................
FIVE YEARS
Unit 2B1 | Boothby Road | Archway, London | N19 4AJ
info@fiveyears.org.uk | www.fiveyears.org.uk | twitter | Facebook
Matt Calderwood, John Hughes, Adam Laschinger, Anne Robinson, Samantha Taylor and The London Sound Survey
Saturday 30th September 2017
6-9pm
.....................................................................
As part of the Art Licks Weekend festival, Five Years is pleased to present Dust Days. An event exploring the temporality of culture. Including musicians, artists and field recordists
This project is partly inspired by American artist Jimmie Durham's Stone Museum; a collection of stones that are presented as a critique of cultural regimes. What differs between culture with access to permanent methods of recording, creating stone and rock bulwarks against time, and those that don't?
This event will present recordings by Adam Laschinger. Taken at the base of a rumbling Mount Etna. Sounds of growling Engine rooms buried deep in the London Underground, recorded by John Hughes. Artist Matt Calderwood's film with its sound track made up of overheard scraps of London street sounds. Singer and artist Samantha Taylor responds to field recordings taken by the London Sound Survey [www.soundsurvey.org.uk]. Anne Robinson's film uses photography and film techniques to solidify song into a permanent monument.
Curated by Phill Wilson-Perkin to take place during his exhibition We Labour, We Labour, We Labour [To Protect Ourselves From The Horrible Sounds of Our Horrible Culture, We Should Return These Stones To The Earth].
Phill Wilson-Perkin lives and works in London. He has exhibited nationally and internationally. Including The International sound art Exhibition and Festival at Morley College and Iklectic, London. By the End of Play for the Glasgow Open House, 2017. Enter The Dragon at the ICA, London, 2015. Blackmoon Larking, G39, Cardiff, Wales, 2015. Call and Responce (watt Tyler), Chisenhale Art Space, London 2015. Sex Shop 2, Transition Gallery, London. UK 2015 and the Folkestone Fringe, UK 2014. Call And Responce [Vancouver], Dynamo Arts, Vancouver, Canada 2014. Sound Off , Vitrine Gallery, London UK 2010 and How We May Be, Light Box, Tate Britain, London UK 2007