Making a rock

This collaborative project with Caroline Locke and Debra Swann was developed through a series of residencies at Primary, Nottingham and Summer Lodge at Nottingham Trent University 2016. The first exhibition at The Collectiv National Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium in 2016 and then developed further as part of an exhibition at Primary, Nottingham 2017.

Making a Rock is an ongoing durational performance that attends to the physical construction of a large-scale object (a cardboard ‘rock’) embracing the potential of duration, temporality, liveness and performativity. Using photography, video and sound to document this process of making, the enquiry expands the vocabulary of sculptural practice through the focus of the durational aspects of making and the idea of the sculptural work in flux. This enquiry explores the process of making and collecting data. It investigates how we understand objects and sound and the properties and qualities they possess. Through the artist/object relationship a focus on the evolution of an object and the artist’s process is examined. Rock Music is a composition created using sounds taken from recordings of the artist Debra Swann making a huge cardboard rock. The artists have explored the different kinds of data gathered from their combined artistic practices. They extract the data and rework it in live performances and exhibited works. Rock Music explores sound in relation to domestic and labour intensive activity. The composition is cut onto a vinyl record which is played over and over within the exhibition space. The sound of the activity becomes abstract and otherworldly when amplified. Mundane working involves repetition – a strange rhythm develops – a kind of chant.