Soon to open at Tashkeel, a contemporary art organization in Dubai committing to fostering a dialogue between art and design, is the exhibition ‘Systems for a Score’ exploring visual language and its relation to sound installation, sculpture and collaborative action withing the gallery space. The exhibition is put on by Fari Bradley and Chris Weaver who are mid-point in their 11-month New Media Artist residency programme at Tashkeel.
For their first solo exhibition in the region, new media artists Bradley and Weaver have constructed a possible grammar of sound art, taking it from its physical through to non-apparent principles. Reiterating sound across divergent forms, from the material to the social (such as sculptures and a recording studio), the artists explore the capacity of sound to bridge actual and imagined states.“Sound is used as a semantic tool and structuring device with which to deconstruct and formulate coded images, sculpture and video,” says Chris Weaver.
Sound is the defining feature of several sculptural works in the exhibition, while others silently prompt an aural concept or experience in the mind of the observer. “Sound art works to an unprecedented set of scores, inspiration for form appears everywhere. Yet currently the language of sound, determined by subjective imagination and context, still enjoys a fluid space within the arts. As it is still relatively ‘new’, it is in a period of self (re)definition,” adds Fari Bradley.
The exhibition’s central exhibition, A Model Studio, adds a social aspect to the exhibition by creating a space for cumulative experience. Working from the studio during the exhibition Bradley and Weaver have invited musicians and artists met while in the UAE to collaborate. The physical form of A Model Studio, and the happenings within it, take as a departure point the Al Sadu (sadoo) weave, a long-standing textile tradition of the Emirates. The weave patterns appear implicitly similar to coded sound in their repetitive, formalised structure, which signify the hand of the maker in the fractionally irregular knots. These forms and methods inspired graphics generated on an 80s Atari game console, which was physically modified by the artists.
An interactive and thought-provoking exhibition, ‘Systems for a Score’ explores how we approach space as an individual and collective body through sound.
The exhibition runs from 8 January until 14 February. For more information, visit www.tashkeel.org
News
January 4, 2015Afternoon Tea At The Wallace Restaurant
