Friday 23rd July, 6pm - 10pm (private view)
Saturday 24th & Sunday 25th July, 1pm - 5pm
Unit 3 Projects Gallery, ASC Studios, Unit 3, Empson Street, London, E3 3LT
A co-curated conversation of new work by visual artist Emily Mary Barnett and sound artist Aino Tytti, including paintings and a multichannel sound installation. The show dissects internal and external landscapes through paint textures and spatial sound.
Somewhere between painting and sculpture, Barnett’s new large-scale works are macro versions of micro moments. Everyday details are amplified and exaggerated, communicated in large gestures, scrawlings, drips and tears, enveloping the viewer in crystalised moments of reflection.
This triptych was made simultaneously, with each canvas being prepped by the last, catching the drips underneath the painting processes, soaking up the puddles of paint from their predecessor. They speak of the detritus of their environment, the stain of the studio floor, the layered paint on the walls and the dusty soil of the cement works outside the studio.
The work speaks of crumbling abandoned quarries, the stain of heartache, dappled rain on dry concrete. They are a fleshy embrace of lipsticky and mineral colours, that play teasingly on the frustrated desire of the viewer to reach out and touch. The work yearns to move away from the chaos of the painting wall, but is still an extraction from this chaos and still wants to speak of it.
Aino Tytti presents the first preview of an ongoing project with the photographer Daniel Benson, which aims to document and bear witness to the Swanscombe Peninsula, a prominent area of marshland in the Thames Estuary, as it is lost to regeneration.
Tytti and Benson anticipate the project will last five years. Over this period the current landscape will give way to realise Europe’s biggest theme park, The London Resort.
Using extended and experimental recording techniques, the sounds, textures and harmonics of the current environment - ordinarily missed or outside the listening scope of the human ear - have been revealed.
Underwater microphones capture the sounds of breathing marshland. Long distance parabolic microphones and geophones extend the reach of the nearby Tilbury docks, registering the infrasonic booms of cargo being unloaded. Electromagnetic microphones pick up the radiating electrical activity from the tallest pylons in the UK, winding their way across the peninsula to the Thames and the Dartford Crossing.
Sounds such as these can sometimes be felt or perceived, but they are rarely heard. This work is a meditation on a landscape at the apex of change. An opportunity for expanded listening. The work has been produced in spatial audio; a 6 channel Ambisonic matrix installation.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
With a background in photography, performance and mixed media events, Barnett’s painting seeks to act directly on the sensorium of the spectator from the body of the artist. Barnett layers everyday materials, such as sand and ordinary house paint, to dizzying effect, producing work that is deeply emotionally expressive and simultaneously highly tactile, almost carnal. Barnett is currently taking part in the Turps Banana offsite painting course.
Aino Tytti is an accomplished sound recordist, sound artist and composer with over 10 years experience. He regularly receives commissions from partners as diverse as the BBC, the Wellcome Trust and Ace Hotel.
A continuing theme in his work is the notion of expanded listening within the built and urban environment - the exploration, capture and re-contextualisation of the sounds around us which are unheard. Using experimental and forensic recording techniques, hidden accents, textures and harmonics in the everyday are revealed and presented to the listener in new and startling ways.
NEW WORKS
EMILY MARY BARNETT
- THE EMBRACE OF DECAY - emulsion and pigment on canvas, 9ft x 12ft
- BABY - emulsion, graphite and pigment on canvas, 9ft x 12ft
- NAVIGATING EMOTIONS - emulsion, soil and pigment on canvas, 9ft x 12ft
AINO TYTTI
- SWANSCOMBE PENINSULA 1.1 - spatial audio; 6 channel Ambisonic matrix installation
For further information and high res images contact emilymarybarnett@gmail.com