A low hissing sound can be heard from the stairway and on entering the gallery the room appears hazily through steam which is escaping from three large tea urns and rising up towards a canopy of plastic. Downstairs, a makeshift shelter is constructed from sheets of corrugated steel leaning against the wall. Above, a row of powerful halogen lamps hang down giving off a heat which can be felt several metres away. Both the residue left on the metal and the presence of the steam provide tangible evidence of the exchange of energy taking place. With both these elements of the installation there is a feeling of being offered protection or sustenance, but implicit as well is the necessity to maintain balance and work within limitations.
Suspended at the back of the gallery is a starry-night backdrop of tie-dyed cloth, leaving no doubt about the constructed nature of this environment. This is reinforced by the rectangular sheet of plastic beneath the urns which is marked out by lines of clay pressed into the ground by hands. However, the regulated shape formed by the clay makes it clear that no romanticised ideal of nature is being offered here. There is no possibility of turning back the clock, but there is an urgent insistence on the creation of an economy based on values other than consumerism–an economy based on exchange. Upstairs, a video of a tortoise living in a contained space and nourished by a heat lamp adjusts the sense of pace. The desired change is not going to come about in dramatic revolution.
While most of the installation seems preconceived and regulated, the cut-out shapes stuck randomly on the wall spaces are more spontaneous. Recycled from unused billboard posters, they resemble unidentified fleshy creatures emerging or retreating from hairy exteriors. Like anemones, they might withdraw at the first sign of danger. As a collaboration, the project is successful. There is clearly a cohesion of ideas and a shared sensibility for materials between the two artists, but, more importantly, tentative feelers are being put out to look for wider communities or ecosystems which could be both realistic and productive.
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Harvest is a one-person show by Tony Maas at the Proposition Gallery. The exhibition aims to explore the gap between what is heard and what is not heard and is largely made up of sound works; however, the link between sound and vision become apparent more gradually. In Silence is a recording made on the day of Princess Diana’s funeral on the concourse of Waterloo station and includes the minute of silence that was to take place in national institutions at 12 o’clock, to coincide with the time the cortège left Westminster Abbey. Snippets of semi-audible conversations can be heard and partially understood by intonation. As a space of transference, silence is not expected, or received. As a space of transference, Waterloo Station is not a place where silence is expected or received; consequently it is difficult to know when the minute begins or ends as no announcement is made; trains continue to pull in and out and a strangely beautiful flickering sound can be identified as the timetable adjusting arrivals and departures. "When is it then?" asks a voice; "No, it’s not yet," someone replies. Audibly, there is a lack of focus to the events. From this, a visual picture emerges which contrasts with the images of mass public mourning taking place in another space.
Shirley MacWilliam’s article in the previous edition of CIRCA, Noise, silence, and the persistence of sound in several cities, explores the manifestation of sound and silence in cultural activity in depth. Particularly relevant is Jonty Semper’s current Locus+ project, Kenotaphion, in which all the archival recordings of the two-minute silence for Armistice Day have been brought together and catalogued, to be made available to the public on a webpage. In addition, a seven-inch single of a recording made in Hyde Park of the one-minute silence for Princess Diana will be released. This places the public reaction to Princess Diana’s death in the greater context of the changing attitudes over the previous century to national mourning.
Upstairs, In Search of the Silent Sea is a sound and video work recording the noise made when a metal prong with a microphone attached is scraped over the surface of a vacant parking lot. To see the video, which is placed on the floor facing the far wall, it is necessary to crouch down, forcing you to engage physically with the wall and floor. The sound hovers between that of a pig snouting for food and the excruciating whine of a dentist’s drill. An aural map of this urban terrain emerges, plotting the mounds and cavities–a transcription of space into sound.
Harvest is an exhibition which does not reveal itself at once; it requires patience and a level of interaction from the viewer, but there are many layers of resonance to be uncovered.
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State of the Art at The Engine Room Gallery is a survey show to mark the millennium of contemporary art largely from Northern Ireland. Eclectic and diverse, it includes contributions in many mediums. Julie McGowan’s untitled photograph articulates one particular state of becoming appropriate to the purpose of the exhibition. The image is of the artist naked and rooted to the ground by four enormous blood-red pods functioning as extensions of her limbs. Taken from the front, the photograph catches a moment when the left side of the body looks likely to slip away from the right, held together by sheer willpower. The image seems to at first disable and then enable the body, thus marking a point of transition for discourses on the feminine body, discourses which were developed in the last century but which demand to be pushed to the limit in this one.
Ruth Jones is an artist based in Belfast and currently undertaking a D. Phil. at The University of Ulster.
