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| Turn (the) leaves - Public participatory event and 8-channel sound installation. Photo: Simon Tutty. Courtesy Thelma Hulbert Gallery |
On 8 August 2018, Megan Calver and I brought together a group of people and trees at Woodbury Castle on the East Devon Way for shared reading and response. Working from a simple set of instructions, participants created a new work of art together by reading aloud.
Recordings made on that day were then re-assembled as a sound installation, with gallery plinths and sound equipment standing in for people and trees. These created an indoor copse through which gallery visitors were invited to wander.
The translation from live participatory work to gallery piece raised some interesting questions, with which I'm still wrestling: What does it mean to translate a public participatory event to the gallery? Who does the work ‘belong’ to? How do you give something meaningful back to participants (including the trees)? What difference does the work make?
Turn (the) leaves on 8 August was an attempt to create a space where dialogue with the nonhuman might happen. The readers and trees were not making our work but their work. The recordings enabled us to share some sense of it with a wider gallery audience, but we always saw this as a new and different iteration. Some visitors said they found the gallery installation 'austere' and 'unwelcoming' and 'not evocative of a woodland' but Megan and I were always clear about our wish to demarcate the public outdoor event from the indoor gallery work. It was the difference between something that happened on the site and in the moment -- and was simultaneously, privately and fleetingly experienced by individuals who took part -- and something mediated, reconstructed and repeatable that could be discussed and shared between different listeners experiencing it at different times.
Turn (the) leaves was commissioned as part of Art on the East Devon Way and shown at Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton (2018). Sound Recordist: Tony Whitehead Technical Consultant: Tim King
Recordings made on that day were then re-assembled as a sound installation, with gallery plinths and sound equipment standing in for people and trees. These created an indoor copse through which gallery visitors were invited to wander.
The translation from live participatory work to gallery piece raised some interesting questions, with which I'm still wrestling: What does it mean to translate a public participatory event to the gallery? Who does the work ‘belong’ to? How do you give something meaningful back to participants (including the trees)? What difference does the work make?
Turn (the) leaves on 8 August was an attempt to create a space where dialogue with the nonhuman might happen. The readers and trees were not making our work but their work. The recordings enabled us to share some sense of it with a wider gallery audience, but we always saw this as a new and different iteration. Some visitors said they found the gallery installation 'austere' and 'unwelcoming' and 'not evocative of a woodland' but Megan and I were always clear about our wish to demarcate the public outdoor event from the indoor gallery work. It was the difference between something that happened on the site and in the moment -- and was simultaneously, privately and fleetingly experienced by individuals who took part -- and something mediated, reconstructed and repeatable that could be discussed and shared between different listeners experiencing it at different times.
Turn (the) leaves was commissioned as part of Art on the East Devon Way and shown at Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton (2018). Sound Recordist: Tony Whitehead Technical Consultant: Tim King
Experiencing the Landscape - Art on the East Devon Way ran from 8 September 2018 to 27 October 2018 and included work by Gabrielle Hoad & Megan Calver, Jenny Mellings, Angus Rutherford and Anne-Marie Culhane.
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