Sounds Like Her - York Art Gallery Exhibition 13th July - 17th September 2019

‘Gender, Sound Art and Sonic Cultures’ is the first thing I see when entering York Art Gallery’s ‘Sounds Like Her’ exhibition’. The touring exhibition, curated by Christine Eyene, explains itself as displaying the work of six female artists in an attempt to broaden preconceptions and approaches to and contest the predominantly Eurocentric, male dominated culture of sound art.

These artists are: Ain Bailey (UK)

Sonia Boyce (UK)

Linda O’Keefe (UK/Ireland)

Christine Son Kim (USA)

Madeline Mbida (Cameroon)

Magda Stawarska-Beavan (UK/Poland)

However, Ain Bailey’s immersive ‘Pitch Sisters’ installation was not displayed during my visit.

I should probably elaborate on my first statement. Although the first thing I saw was the exhibition’s explanatory subtitle, it was by no means the first thing I experienced as I entered the exhibit. Quite naturally, I was hit by a teeming array of sounds- to my left, the sound of a child babbling, to my right, someone was playing a Balafon (An African Xylophone) and my attention was simultaneously drawn towards the back of the room where I could hear in the distance vibrating, oscillating tones whose original source I could not quite place.

Immediately, I was drawn up into an unfamiliar and immersive art form which took over both the space and me.

The first works I was confronted with were three pieces named ‘Mother Tongue’ I, II, and IV by Magda Stawarska-Beavan. Each piece consisted of a screen-print of audio frequencies and the phonetic alphabet, and a machine below them containing the digital audio the print illustrated. Pulling the cable of the machine triggered the clips to play, releasing firstly a baby’s first cries and babbling, then in the next piece a toddler repeating the words of his parents in both Polish and English, and lastly, a child forming his own words and sentences

The piece was made by Stawarska-Beavan to explore the speech development of her son using traditional printmaking as well as modern technologies, allowing Stawarska-Beavan to preserve these precious, temporary sounds as artefacts available to be observed and considered. Not only this, his early signs of bilingualism, repeating both English and Polish words after his parents, contemplated the development of one’s cultural identity and relationship with different languages. This is a theme Stawarska-Beavan took into other pieces displayed in the exhibition, mainly her short film ‘Who/Wer’.

This film, displayed in a darkened room, showed two videos running alongside one another. In one, the black and white camera footage followed a man on his daily commute while a male voice reverberated throughout the room in German. Next to this, footage in colour showed fixed video shots of buildings in another town while a woman’s voice, speaking in English, seemingly battled the man’s voice overhead to be heard. I must admit this piece was more difficult than others to comprehend without the assistance of the exhibition notes.

'Who/Wer' by Magda Stawarska-Beavan

The intention behind this piece was to create stark contrast between the two videos and audios. The man’s unfamiliar journey through Vienna on the left and the narration in a language one may not know was juxtaposed with the lifelike colour and calming stillness of the footage on the left, and the woman’s voice telling the same tale in English. The overlapping sounds and style of footage indeed led me to contemplate how the different effects of environment, sound and languages, leading me back to Stawarska-Beavan and her son’s bilingualism, and to consider its benefits, in a multicultural society and while travelling.

I was drawn back through the room to investigate the xylophone I had seen being played earlier. It belonged to the works of Madeleine Mbida, to assist in illustrating, as her paintings did, aspects of Cameroon’s Bikutsi music and dance in Cameroon. Two sibling paintings displayed the outlines of figures dancing, with female figures performing a dance movement with their feet called “etegue meko’o” while male figures were ‘breaking’ their hips in a dance called “etegue ankug”. The overlapping outlines in an array of bright colours conveyed a sense of the active vibrancy of the dancing, communicating the sound and soul of the dances in these static paintings.

The work of Christine Sun Kim struck me next as I continued my circulation of the exhibit. The exhibition displays two still art series and two short films, the sound of which can be listened to through headphones. Sun Kim was born death, and despite this fact has used her work to allow her access to sound. Her still art pieces explore her perception of sound, using lines and musical signs to map out the sounds going on around her, creating a visual language and allowing her to comprehend sound. One of the ways Sun Kim developed one of these series, ‘Available Spaces for Composers’, was through observing the reactions of others around her. An example she gave of this was if, in a restaurant, a plate falls and everyone turns to look around, she knows a sound was made which signalled the plate hitting the ground. This particular series by Sun Kim was perhaps my favourite of the exhibit because of the individual creativity and intelligence with which it was formed. It showed that sound is not a fixed language and can be heard in more ways than one if one is determined enough to search for it.

One of the short films displayed showed the process of Sun Kim forming the series ‘What Can a Body Do’. This series displayed how sound can be useful not just in communication, but also in its raw power as vibrations. Sun Kim, not having access to its primary form, instead played ambient sounds, the sound of her own voice, and other noises through large sub woofers upon which wooden canvases laid. Upon these, nails, brushes, and other miscellaneous tools dipped in paint were laid which, when shaken by the vibrations of the different sounds, created painted marks upon the wood. The video displayed the different painted patterns made by different sound, again continuing Sun Kim’s exploration of converting sound into a visual language she could then access.

After observing the other works around the room, I allowed myself finally to investigate the side room from which, as I had been constantly aware throughout my visit, strange, unfamiliar sounds had been emitted. The room exhibited Linda O’Keeffe’s series ‘Hybrid Soundscapes’, a collection of prints on the four walls and audio intending to explore the effects of societal impacts on sound. I could only really appreciate this installation when I read about what each wall painting and sound was supposed to illustrate, learning that each wall symbolised a different location and separate issue she was addressing.

‘Hybrid Soundscapes’ by Linda O'Keefe

The audio, too, was seemingly sectioned four ways, with each section highlighting these issue. The sounds of a hydroelectric farm in Iceland heard from underneath a river, intended to consider the environmental impacts of such technologies, then the sounds of windfarms in Spain and the UK, followed by the contrasting soundscapes of rural and urban China. The wall paintings intended to illustrate the sounds physically, with arrows and shapes visualising the sounds in an almost Synthesiatic way.

‘Hybrid Soundscapes’ by Linda O'Keefe

Like Sun Kim’s work, I observed the installation predominantly as a display of the language of sound, both physical and audible. It did not, however, communicate to me the environmental questions and issues O’Keefe considered while forming the piece. Perhaps I was just becoming overwhelmed with the intense noise in the room that I was no longer able to think straight, as I was quite relieved to leave this installation and move into the Gallery’s display of Nicholas Poussin’s ‘Triumph of Pan’ and other related of work which allowed me the headspace to consider the exhibition as a whole.

‘Sounds Like Her’ was an eclectic display without fixed purpose or theme beyond ‘Sound’ and exploration. Even the gendered subtext suggested by the title seemed unfixed, giving one only a vague underlying awareness that the exhibition wants to break out of the norms of the traditional, patriarchal artworld, rather than being a vehicle for carrying a specifically feminist message. The exhibition took a broad theme and ran with it, displaying works with a range of purposes, each in their individual way incorporating sound into their work, allowing the exhibition to achieve the environment of exploration it seemed to search for, starting at the uncommon genre of sound art. This led to an experience in which one could not simply unconsciously look around, but drew you to look closer and observe each woman’s individual approach and creativity.

I would highly recommend a visit of the exhibition to experience it personally, as well as to see other including the ‘Immersive Devotional Wallpaper’ by Sonia Boyce. The Wallpaper features the names of two hundred black British females in the music industry, and placards alongside present photographs, posters, and magazine covers of these women, intended to act as a historical map, preventing these women and their work from being forgotten.

Written by Rosie Day