1st June – 15 June 2019
With music by Bennett Hogg
ACA (Allenhead Contemporary Arts)
In late 2018, I was invited by Alan Smith and Helen Radcliffe to show some work around the theme of birdsong and the dawn chorus at ACA. This was a real privilege as I have always believed that ACA was one the best venues in the UK to show and work with – and I wasn’t disappointed. The show was part of a larger project initiated by ACA linking art and science – see https://www.acart.org.uk/continuum-programme
I made five new pieces for this showing of the work with Bennett Hogg and Geoff Sample – and Geoff gave a wonderful talk about birdsong – which was sold out.
One of the new pieces was titled The Full Dawn Chorus — made especially for this gallery space — and was an eight-foot square wall piece constructed from over one hundred sheets of A4 paper re-presenting the full dawn chorus. For this piece, and working closely with Alex Charrington of Charrington Editions, I devised a more nuanced and complex set of neumatic notations (again derived loosely from Geoff’s original sonograms – see attached information for a more detailed escription). Here there are three layers of notations on each of the twenty-one lines — a layer of black notations, a layer of medium-grey notations and a layer of light-grey notations. The full image is shown below with a table indicating which birds appear where on the piece.
Black notations
Dunnock; Blackbird; Chiffchaff; Goldcrest; Great Tit; Song Thrush; Nuthatch; Blue Tit; Redstart; Chaffinch; Robin; Spotted Flycatcher; Mistle Thrush; Wren; Wood Pigeon; Greenfinch; Blackbird 2; Chiffchaff 2; Robin 2; Nuthatch 2; Redstart 2.
Medium-grey notations
Chiffchaff 2; Spotted Flycatcher; Blue Tit; Blackbird; Blackbird 2; Chiffchaff 2; Blackbird; Chiffchaff 2; Nuthatch; Chiffchaff 2; Wood Pigeon; Great Tit; Nuthatch 2; Redstart; Redstart 2; Wren; Blackbird; Chiffchaff; Redstart 2; Spotted Flycatcher; Song Thrush.
Medium-grey notations
Chiffchaff 2; Spotted Flycatcher; Blue Tit; Blackbird; Blackbird 2; Chiffchaff 2; Blackbird; Chiffchaff 2; Nuthatch; Chiffchaff 2; Wood Pigeon; Great Tit; Nuthatch 2; Redstart; Redstart 2; Wren; Blackbird; Chiffchaff; Redstart 2; Spotted Flycatcher; Song Thrush.
Full Dawn Chorus,
Digital Print; 228.5cm x 223.2cm
May 2019 – Produced in collaboration with Alex Charrington and installed by Alex and Tom Jordan
The other new pieces (clockwise from left to right in the images below) are a set of four paintings, – acrylic on board; again made especially for the show at ACA. Within each different Dawn Chorus there are various smaller communities of song – what I have called Vignettes. Vignette #1 re-imagines Blackbird and Robin singing before dawn; Vignette #2, Spotted Flycatcher, Great Tit, Nuthatch and Chaffinch; Vignette #3, Wren, Goldcrest, Spotted Flycatcher, Blue Tit and Dunnock and Vignette #4 Greenfinch, Goldfinch and Chiffchaff.
