Jenna Burchell’s travelling project Homing, opens at the Lovell Gallery, Cape Town

Jenna Burchell’s travelling project Homing, opens at the Lovell Gallery, Cape Town

Project: Homing

Event:  Touring exhibition project

Date:  OPENING 31 July 2014 at 6:30pm

            Exhibition closes 13 September 2014

Walkabout: Saturday 2 August at 11:00am

Venue:  Lovell Gallery, The Loft 139 Albert Road Woodstock, Cape Town.

 

Jenna Burchell’s travelling exhibition project Homing, is in full production and has launched with positive and emotional responses from audiences both at the 2014 Grahamstown National Arts Festival on the 3rd of July and the Turbine Art Fair on the 17th of July. Diane De Beer comments, “with a simple touch of a copper wire or running your fingers through a set of wires you can discover sounds that might remind you of home, or awaken a memory so vivid its almost chilling”. The third part of Burchell’s touring project will open at the Lovell Gallery in Cape Town on the 31st of July.

Burchell’s installation project Homing encourages audiences to consider and reflect on what home means to them in the context of diaspora. It is an opportunity to encourage diverse people to interact and exchange their stories, embracing the differences and similarities that unite South Africans. This hand-built interactive environment has been designed by Burchell with the aim of being an accessible meeting of contemporary art, sound and live interactive participation.

The Homing project is an installation comprising of hundreds of copper strings strung from floor to ceiling. As the viewer moves through the field of cords they interact with the artwork, they touch, listen and play. Each cord is touch sensitive, with pre-recorded sounds which Burchell describes as “memories of home”. There are dogs barking, laughter, thunder, traffic, a piano – “wherever you may be today, wherever you may live, each string of my touch-sensitive instrument Homing, triggers familiar sounds that take you back to that place - real or imagined - where you know you belong, feel safe, breathe easily” says Burchell.

The soundscapes presented at each exhibition are uniquely recorded and collected within a local community two weeks prior to a show. Some of these memories, conversations and ambient sounds are heard raw, others processed into intricate musical tones. The current soundscape is played alongside the soundscape of the previous exhibition, thereby allowing the audience to move and play between the two. The National Arts Festival held the soundscape drawn from Pretoria and Grahamstown. The Turbine Art Fair held the soundscape of Pretoria, Grahamstown and Johannesburg. Burchell’s exhibition at Lovell Gallery will include the soundscapes from Grahamstown, Pretoria and Cape Town.

 

The artist has received positive responses from the public to her Homing project and from their interactions with sound, touch and memory. The project has received funding and sponsorship from the National Arts Festival, the Ithuba Arts Fund, Walro Flex (copper pigtail), Astro Aluminium (aluminium ceiling) and the Lovell Gallery. Burchell was also the recipient of in kind and pro bono support from A Skyline on Fire (audio processing, Pretoria), Sebastian Jamieson (audio processing, Grahamstown), Leinster Grimes (electronic engineering) , Schalk Erasmus (installation consultant), Granger Scholtz (videography), Maldwyn Greenwood (audio equipment) and Bushveld Labs (electronic equipment and software engineering).

 

GALLERY TIMES

10am-6pm Tuesday-Friday.

10am-2pm Saturday

LOVELL GALLERY

Tel: (0)21 447 5918

tamzin@lovellgallery.co.za

Winner of the 2014 African Writer´s Residency announced!

Ghanaian writer Nii Parkes wins the 2014 African Writer´s Residency Award

Nii Parkes has been selected as the 2014 winner of the Sylt Foundation African Writer´s Residency Award. Parkes, who lives in Ghana and England is the recipient of the Residency Award, which he will take up at the Sylt Foundation´s headquarters within the next months.

Nii Ayikwei Parkes is a writer, editor, socio-cultural commentator and performance poet. He holds an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck (University of London) and is a 2007 recipient of Ghana's national ACRAG award for poetry and literary advocacy. Nii's début novel 'Tail of the Blue Bird' was shortlisted for the 2010 Commonwealth Prize and his work has been translated into Italian, French, Chinese, Dutch, German and Arabic. His latest books of poetry are the Michael Marks Award-shortlisted pamphlet, ballast: a remix (2009) and The Makings of You (Peepal Tree Press).

Winning this award Nii Parkes commented: „ The fact that the award of the Sylt Residency considers work in progress as one of its criteria makes this win doubly sweet - it validates the work I am doing and also gives me valuable immersion time to work towards its completion. I'm dreading the cold on Sylt island, but I'm very happy.“

The winner was selected in a two-tier process by the four independent judges, this year judges were Imraan Coovadia (writer and literary scholar, Cape Town), Pamela Nichols (literary scholar, Johannesburg), Veronique Tadjo (poet, writer and literary scholar, Johannesburg) and Indra Wussow (literary scholar and translator, Johannesburg/Sylt) out of an impressive list of strong contenders. The jury commented “Nii Parkes is such an original writer who easily moves about different literary genres that he will surely offer us something new and exciting with this new project he will be working on in his residency“.

This new residency opportunity is awarded annually to writers of contemporary African literature. The winner of the 1st African Writer´s Award 2013 was Nigerian writer Chika Unigwe. The African Writer´s Residency Award provides a two month stay in a subsidized apartment to writers of contemporary African literature, who engage with current thems and concerns related to Africa and the African diaspora. The award is open to published writers of poetry, prose, plays and novels.

The Foundation is located on the island of Sylt off the coast of Hamburg in Germany. Its residency programme has been running for several years and offers opportunities to South African as well as international visual artists, writers, composers and film makers. The programme is managed under the directorship of literary scholar and curator Indra Wussow.

For additional information:

The Sylt Foundation

www.kunstraum-syltquelle.de

www.jozi-artlab.co.za

Jenna Burchell’s travelling Project Homing is set to launch at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival, stimulating sound, touch and memory with her interactive installation.

Jenna Burchell’s travelling project Homing, launches at the 2014 National Arts Festival

Jenna Burchell’s travelling exhibition project Homing, is in full production and will be launching at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival on the 3rd of July. The travelling project Homing encourages audiences to talk about what home means to them in the context of diaspora. It is an opportunity to move diverse people to interact and exchange their stories, embracing the differences and similarities that unite South Africans. This hand-built interactive environment has been designed by Burchell with the aim to be an accessible meeting of contemporary art, sound and live interactive participation.

The Homing project is an installation comprising of hundreds of copper strings strung from floor to ceiling. As the viewer moves through the field of cords they interact with the artwork, they touch, listen and play. Each cord is touch sensitive, with pre-recorded sounds which Burchell describes as “memories of home”. There are dogs barking, laughter, thunder, traffic, a piano – “wherever you may be today, wherever you may live, each string of my touch-sensitive instrument Homing, triggers familiar sounds that take you back to that place - real or imagined - where you know you belong, feel safe, breathe easily” says Burchell.

The soundscapes presented at each exhibition are uniquely recorded and collected with the local community two weeks prior to a show. Some of these memories, conversations and ambient sounds are heard raw, others processed into intricate musical tones. The current soundscape is played alongside the previous exhibition’s soundscape, thereby allowing the audience to move and play between the two.  The National Arts Festival will hold the soundscape drawn from Pretoria and Grahamstown. Grahamstown based sound engineer Sebastian Jamieson has worked in collaboration with Burchell in producing the Grahamstown soundscape.

There has been a positive response to Burchell’s Homing project and the interactions with sound, touch and memory. The project has received large support and has been funded by the National Arts Festival, the Ithuba Arts Fund, Walro Flex (copper pigtail), Astro Aluminium (aluminium ceiling) and the Lovell Gallery. Burchell has also received in kind and pro bono support from A Skyline on Fire (audio processing, Pretoria), Sebastian Jamieson (audio processing, Grahamstown), Leinster Grimes (electronic engineering) , Schalk Erasmus (installation consultant), Granger Scholtz (videography), Maldwyn Greenwood (audio equipment) and Bushveld Labs (electronic equipment and software engineering).

The project will be touring from the Grahamstown National Arts Festival to Johannesburg, where a sample of the work will be shown at the Turbine Art Fair, in the Turbine hollow from the 18th to 20th of July.  After the end of its Johannesburg showing the project will travel to Cape Town where it will be installed at the Lovell Gallery from the 31st of July to the 13th of September.

GALLERY TIMES

National Arts Festival, Grahamstown.

3rd - 13th of July 2014

Rhodes School of Art Studio Gallery

09:00 - 17:00 Daily

Walkabouts at venue 5 July 12:00 / 7 July 14:00 / 10 July 10:00. 

Contact Festival booking office to book for walkabouts

(NAF will hold a soundscape of Pretoria and Grahamstown)

For media enquiries please contact Art Source South Africa:

Kelly McErlean

Kelly@artsourcesouthafrica.co.za

072 600 7709