Instruments of Industry, 2016 (exhibition)
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Instruments of Industry, approaches the tool as an extension of ourselves; our contact, relationship to and being in the world. It draws on the connection between the Touchstones museum’s off site collection of trade tools and their resting place, Thomas Robinson and Son’s, a former engineering works which now houses the archive. These prehensile tools have been elevated to museum objects and represent our pre-industrial relationship to work. Disembodied from the hands and minds that worked them, they are no longer ‘present at hand’ and remain at a distance, carefully preserved as an object of aesthetic and historic value. This body of work was created over a 12 month residency in Touchstones Museums’ archive and generously funded through a New Opportunities Award by New Expressions 3, in partnership with Visual Arts South West, Arts Council England and Touchstones Rochdale. List of Works Re-sounding Unit 6, Row G in 8 movements ~ The tools on the shelves hold a latent memory of an action, the resonating sounds created in the molding, measuring, bending and shaping of process and a material. Using over 500 individual sounds and frequencies captured from ‘ringing’ the Museums collection of hand tools, the audio installation is composed as a series of eight movements which directly relate to the placement of the tools upon the shelves in the archive. The work is a re-sounding of the tools, a transmission which explores resonance as a way of touching and conversing. Each of the eight movements play at one time, generating, shifting placement and position during the course of the exhibition. Materials: 8 channel audio installation, steel shelving, museum objects, monitor speakers, media players. Score for Unit 6, Row G in 8 movements ~ are a series of blueprints of the original working score use to develop the audio installation. Each page documents a the contents of a shelf and creates the timeframe within the score, the eight rows forming the eight movements within the composition. The spaces between the blueprints represent both actual physical and audible space in the archive. Materials: Hahnemühle paper, blueprint. First edition monotypes. Photo credits: Simon Liddiard Industrial Folklore Tapes Vol.I – Instruments of Industry ~ a limited edition Binaural recordings and a library of recordings and cataloging of Museum objects made in Touchstones off-site archive. Ten-inch record with gatefold sleeve with twelve page full-colour booklet containing photographs, drawings & essay by Dr.Laura Mansfield and released on Folklore Tapes, 2017. Press: |
