Back to the Things Themselves:
A two person exhibition with Lesley Punton
The Briggait, Glasgow: Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2012
The Things Themselves (Gallery 1) and Morning Broadcast (Gallery 2)
FM radios and Transmitters broadcasting digital sound tracks.
The Things Themselves: The radios are tuned to two small FM transmitters, installed elsewhere in the gallery, that broadcast a series of softly spoken descriptions, in both male and female voices. The descriptions articulate the natural forms that are the subject of the drawings A Sort of Visual Rhythm; Symphoricarpos, also situated in Gallery 1, and Orrery; Galium aparine in Gallery 2. The soundtracks coming from the two radios are slightly out of sync with one another, so that two different voices can be heard at any one time.
Extract from the spoken texts:
The arms branch again, this time in three, and again, ever shorter, ever thinner. These spindly lines are contrasted by the solid, fuzzy orbs that are fixed singly or in pairs at their terminal points. It's as if, were it not to cleave and bind to itself and other things and one were able to pick each array up in it's entirety, it would form a sort of perfectly balanced, hanging sculpture or the orrery of some complex universe. But this flowing, binding perfection speaks only from this particular place and time, inseparable from the whole. As the light fades, they seem to recede, become wraith, underexposed versions of themselves.
Hearfelt thanks to Anne Campbell, Callum Kellie, Kirsty Stansfied, Simon Yuill and Allan Watson for their work as readers on the Back the Things Themselves recording:
A PDF of the spoken texts can be found here
Orrery: Galim aperine. Graphite on paper (420 x 594 mm)
A Sort of Visual Rhythm: Symphoricarphos. Graphite on paper (420 x 594 mm)
Listening in the Gap consists of a series of written descriptions detailing what could be heard during a concentrated period of listening in the gaps between broadcasts over the FM spectrum of a Robert's R25 analogue radio (88 - 108 FM) on the 25th May 2011 between 4.20 and 6.15pm.
Extract from the text:
102 - 104:
Soft hiss, like rain in trees, but at a distance. The spinning, high-pitched sound is there but less keen. The odd crackle, like dust on a record, can be heard. These sounds play around the edges of deliberately broadcast ones.
Listening in the Gap: printed, bound text of 38 pages (300 x 300mm approximately)
Instructions for Creating a Gap: Printed A4 text (available for gallery visitors to take away)
A PDF of the Instructions can be found here