Sound Matters – Exploring Sound through Forms

5th June 2013

An innovative exhibition from the Crafts Council, exploring craft and sound commences its Highland tour this weekend at the Iona Gallery, Kingussie. Sound Matters considers the connections between craft practice and sound art. Seven contemporary works have been selected to illustrate ways in which these two distinct practices can collide. Exploring the physicality of sound, the works are characterised by both their sonic properties and materiality.

The makers and artists represented in this exhibition demonstrate how an engagement with sound also implicates an engagement with matter. Drawn from across creative disciplines, each work is indicative of a different approach: looking to traditional craft heritage and processes such as weaving and woodturning to create new sound forms, playing with shared technologies and language and revealing the sounds of materials.

With its equal emphasis on sound and form, Sound Matters offers a new and multi-sensory engagement with craft, with each work demanding to be heard as well as seen. With works of varying scale and volume, it is as important to listen as to look to fully experience the show.

Some highlights from the exhibition include Keith Harrison’s piece Lucie Rie vs Grindcore in which the artist has adapted potters’ wheels to make turntables which play a grindcore metal record on one and a raw clay disc on the other. Cathy Lane in Tweed brings together digital voice recordings and weaving from the Outer Hebrides. 9 Volt Speaker by Owl Project is an acoustically designed 11-sided speaker horn made of wych elm while Sound Lathe highlights the relationship between the crafting of physical objects and the shaping of sound.

The exhibition has been brought to the Highlands by High Life Highland and will tour to three venues in the Highlands:

Iona Gallery, Kingussie: 1st – 29th June 2013
St Fergus Gallery, Wick Library: 6th July – 3rd August 2013
Inverness Museum & Art Gallery: 10th August – 7th September 2013
Sound Matters is produced by the Crafts Council with David Toop, Professor of Audio Culture and Improvisation at University of the Arts London, as curatorial advisor.