Symphony for Strings and Fresh Voices at The Castle
30/04/09
Maybe it’s the approach of Nottingham Contemporary, maybe it’s the time of year (or maybe it’s the time of man?), but I sense new vigour and growth at Nottingham’s more established galleries just now. With Simon Withers’ Metahang and the exciting commission of Gemma Pardo’s film Finisterre to accompany the Coasting (Turner and Bonington) exhibition at The Castle plus the stunning Joan Fontcuberta show Datascapes currently wowing the Djanogly Gallery at the Lakeside, not to mention the impossibly cool programme by Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard coming up at Broadway in mid-May - there’s some really fresh and imaginative work appearing in unexpected places all over the city.
With all that in mind, I’d strongly recommend you to pop up to The Castle on one of these lovely spring/early summer days to catch two extremely fresh and pleasing pieces of work, both running till 7th June.
Susie MacMurray, Tempus Mutatum (Time/change), 2009 (photo by Andy Keate)
In the Bandstand, Susie MacMurray has staged a beautiful installation called Tempus Mutatum (Time/change) consisting of hundreds of musical instrument strings (and bow hairs) suspended from tiny hooks in the ceiling. I’d particularly urge you to catch this show on one of the days when the Bandstand is being opened up (see dates below**). I saw it first at another time, and the impact of viewing the strings through the glass windows of the Bandstand (and with light behind them coming from the opposite windows) is nothing compared with the experience of walking round the circle or - even better - of sitting or kneeling on a “prayer cushion” to look up towards the ceiling sources.
Susie MacMurray, Photogram, 2009
In The Castle, there are some fine framed photograms by Susie MacMurray which also utilise musical strings, and which counterpoint the Bandstand installation. See the suspended string installation first, as it creates a context for the internal work, which would not otherwise have such a powerful effect.
There’s a really lovely free brochure to go with the show, written by Annabel Lucas, which explains what MacMurray is seeking to achieve: “A series of independent sound relics in the form of individual, used instrument strings and bow hairs combine to form a delicate, hovering sound shadow. A mass of strings and hairs have been collected and united, yet the volume within the bandstand is taken up by almost nothing, a presence and an absence exist. Animated but silent, these relics spin slowly in the slight draft from the windows.” The photograms in The Castle “attempt to capture this same ephemeral experience through frozen (in a sense absent) images”.
The visual effect in the Bandstand, especially when viewed at close hand from within the space itself, is subtly beautiful - and all the more so because of the silence emanating from the dead, but still delicate, strings.
Meanwhile, Lucy Stevens - an MA graduate from NTU in 2007 - has created a really enjoyable, noisy soundscape/audio tour of the Castle grounds called Walk With Me. From the off, I defy you not to look over your shoulder several times to check where the voices are coming from, so powerful is the stereo immediacy of the soundtrack. It is fascinating to walk round with noises and voices in your head, complementing the sounds of “real” things happening all about you. I did the walk at exactly 12 noon, and heard both the Council House and the fabulous clock on Castle Boulevard chime in real time, but I had by then already lost confidence in my ability to distinguish between past and present, art and fact! It’s as if you are walking with ghosts, which is appropriate as Stevens recounts several haunting tales of lost souls who still allegedly inhabit the Castle and its gardens and caves.
Lucy Stevens, Walk With Me, 2009 (photo: Michael Kipling)
Lucy Stevens offers a really fresh, personal jaunt, including intriguing descriptions of people she passed when recording it. Did I see them again? Was that Mortimer and Queen Isabella? It can’t have been, but who knows? This is so much more than an audio guide, it is a piece of imaginative magic in its own right. Collect your MP3 player from the Gatehouse and remember to bring some picture ID as a “deposit”.
While Susie MacMurray’s work strikes through the absence of sound emanating from the delicate suspended strings in the Bandstand, Lucy Stevens achieves a different but equally pleasing effect by giving us a panoply of noises. Both pieces of work re-invent the visitor’s experience at The Castle in strikingly memorable ways.
The Castle have produced an excellent free brochure with an account of Lucy Stevens’ work written by Joanne Lee.
**NB The times (from now on) when Susie MacMurray’s installation can be viewed up close in The Bandstand are 12noon to 3pm on:
April 30; May 1, 4, 5, 6, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 21, 22 and 23; and June 7.
For more about the artists, Nottingham Visual Arts recommends following these links to their websites:
