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).
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LOVELL GALLERY
Tel: (0)21 447 5918
tamzin@lovellgallery.co.za