22/9/2005
Sound Track
Ada St, London
A new site specific installation by artist Nick Hornby and actor Simon Woods, consisting of a 320 string 100 foot long playable cello sculpture, and the story of a blind woman unable to communicate but for fragments of her inner monologue we find recorded on audio food labels. The cello sculpture invites the viewer to touch and play it.
Sculpture and sound installation by Nick Hornby and Simon Woods - including a 320 string playable cello sculpture
We are pleased to inform you of a new site specific installation by
artist Nick Hornby and actor Simon Woods, consisting of a 320 string
100 foot long playable cello sculpture, and the story of a blind woman
unable to communicate but for fragments of her inner monologue we find
recorded on audio food labels.
The cello sculpture invites the viewer to touch and play it. The 320
strings are tuned to a melody that rises and falls and wanders without
cadence. As each viewer runs their fingers along the strings, they
create their own cinematic accompaniment – their own soundtrack - each
with different speeds and strokes: gentle and melancholy or fast and
energetic.
The show also contains a narrative voice - that of a blind woman, on
whose inner monologue we are able to eavesdrop in a series of sound
installations around the space. Her disembodied voice struggles to
tell its story, hampered by the objects which it inhabits, and which
give it life. She is capable of speaking only in fragments and in
isolation, and her story is controlled and marshaled, like the harp
sculpture, by the audience.
If the relationship between the visually impaired and their
surroundings is oriented towards the acoustic and tactile properties of
a space, then this show aims to replicate that focus: objects sound:
they tell stories, they play music, by analogy or literally.
This ambitious cohabitation of sculpture and narrative explores our
desire to create meaning, to imbue objects and sounds with emotion and
to touch and communicate.
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Nick Hornby lives and works in London. His current work centres on the
placement and misplacement of soundscapes and on the subversion of the
everyday by architectural interventions, object-collages, images, sound
and video . He studied at The Slade, The Art institute of Chicago.
Previous shows include: solo performances at 291 Gallery, Video work at
Heaven Gallery in Chicago showcasing criticalarware.net, a solo video
installation in the Bank Vaults of the Edinburgh Central Library and
inclusion in a group show of net.art at the Lux alongside Bank, Mat
Collishaw, Gilbert & George, Julian Opie, Mark Quinn, and Bob & Roberta
Smith.
Simon Woods is a successful Film actor. He is playing the role of Mr
Bingley in Working Title’s new film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice,
opposite Kiera Knightly, Judi Dench, Donald Sutherland and Brenda
Blethyn, which will be on general cinema release in early September
2005. A Previous Engagement, starring Juliet Stevenson, is also due out
in the autumn. Previously, he has appeared in Cambridge Spies and
Charles II for the BBC, and Foyle’s War for ITV. He has just finished
shooting a Channel 4 biopic of Princess Margaret playing one of her
lovers, and is currently filming a drama about Elizabeth I, alongside
Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons. Press: Simon features in the current
issues of Another Magazine, Factory Magazine, and Tatler.
Ada St
2A ADA ST, LONDON
OPENING TIMES: THURS - SAT 12-6