Exhibitions

Brady Cranfield, Brian Joseph Davis, Ceal Floyer, Luke Fowler, Holly Ward
The Sound I’m Looking For
Part 2

November 26, 2008 to January 18, 2009

Exhibition curated by Cate Rimmer
Opening Reception: Tuesday November 25, 2008 at 7:30pm

The Charles H. Scott Gallery is pleased to present The Sound I’m Looking For, Part 2, an exhibition of sound-based work by Canadian and international artists curated by Cate Rimmer. The second part of this two-part exhibition explores auditory experience, our relationship to music and the ways that sound functions socially and ideologically.

Scottish artist and musician Luke Fowler’s documentary film Pilgrimage From Scattered Points looks at composer Cornelius Cardew and The Scratch Orchestra, formed in the late sixties. The Scratch Orchestra performed experimental compositions until ideological rifts brought about its demise in the early seventies. Fowler blends archival and contemporary footage while also playing with our ideas of the documentary format. While Fowler’s film works have been shown in Europe and the United States this is the first time his work will be shown in Canada.

In her site-specific installation work for the exhibition Vancouver-based Holly Ward incorporates a poem about entropy and progress by the visionary architect R. Buckminster Fuller. Ward recorded the reading in a geodesic dome in Germany built by the US as a listening station to monitor the former East German Republic, a function at odds with Fuller’s idealistic beliefs. Ward’s work has been shown internationally and locally including Idyll: 3 Exhibitions at the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery earlier this year.

Berlin-based Ceal Floyer creates a sensory experience in her sound installation Goldberg Variation. Taking Bach’s initial aria as her starting point, Floyer simultaneously overlays multiple versions which break down into a cacophony that disorders the reasoned structure of Bach’s composition. Floyer is a renowned artist whose work has been included in exhibitions throughout the world including a major solo exhibition currently at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina in Naples, Italy.

Toronto artist, writer and composer Brian Joseph Davis’ work Original Soundtrack uses musical cues from menus of commercially available DVD’s in order to create a new score that manipulates, loops and combines his chosen source material. Documentation of a recent performance of the work along with Davis’ graphic score for the piece will be displayed in the exhibition. Davis has created a number of sound-based works which he refers to as “re-purposed” popular music.

For his work in the exhibition, Vancouver-based artist, writer, and musician Brady Cranfield examines a major divide in rock history. He will stage a performance in the ECU Theatre where high-school debate teams will tackle the question “Who’s better, The Beatles or The Rolling Stones?” In the gallery, Cranfield will show a new work titled The White Album and Sticky Fingers which is comprised of two silent, looping videos that picture the artist listening to vinyl copies of the classic records.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a talk by legendary American composer, Pauline Oliveros, held on November 27th at 7pm in the ECU Theatre and a performance by Brady Cranfield titled The Beatles vs The Rolling Stones, December 3rd at 7:30 pm in the ECU Theatre. Pauline Oliveros is presented in collaboration with the Western Front New Music Programme.

Brady Cranfield, The White Album and Sticky Fingers, 2008. DVD.

Holly Ward, Listening Post, 2008. Sound installation. Photo credit: Kevin Schmidt.