Invisible Narratives

Rebecca Chesney will be showing three pieces, including a line drawing measuring 8.75m long, showing 102 years of mean sea level recorded at Newlyn’s Tidal Observatory, the point from which altitude is measured across the UK. Over the length of the drawing you can see the increase in sea level over the years.

“I was lucky to get permission to go inside the Newlyn Tidal Observatory situated on the end of the South Pier, when I visited earlier this year.  Although it’s a small and unassuming building, I was struck by the importance of its role, providing over 100 years of records on sea level data,” says Chesney.

Also included in the exhibition is Forewarning, a three-screen video and sound installation filmed in 2018 on South Walney Island off the coast of Cumbria.

As well as curating the exhibition, Lubaina Himid will present a suite of paintings in the drawers of a dressing table - sometimes they will be hidden but more often completely exposed as a reminder that lives lived below the surface, and out of view, are as important as those we find in history books. Himid paints on a variety of surfaces, including ceramic and wood, often producing objects with performative potential intended to be encountered in a space.

“Buildings contain the traces and voices of those who have built them and occupied them.  It’s not always easy to see what remains but you can be pretty sure that the door handles, locks, thresholds and window fixings have been used before. During the past few years I have been painting people on the insides of drawers taken from abandoned pieces of household furniture. Hidden in plain sight, audiences will also be able to see a series of tiny paintings echoing the long and unresolved relationship I have with the sea and its impossibly enormous story,” says Himid.

Magda Stawarska-Beavan is showing several pieces, including Translating the City, a sound piece featuring the interwoven voices of two women, Ekin Sanac (from Istanbul) and Lubaina Himid, who were asked to listen to a sound composition created from recordings captured by Stawarska-Beavan in Istanbul. This recorded sound evoked particular memories and emotions for the two artists which they translated into text and then again into spoken word. The rhythms of their speech patterns, their accents and the colour of their voices, created a new soundscape for the listener to paint a new set of images. She will also be showing four silkscreen prints from the series To Follow along with two new paintings on paper in a conversation between Casablanca and Berlin about loss and neglect.

“I have worked on several projects, including the listening to and recording of unknown cities from a very personal viewpoint using binaural microphones. Often, with those past projects, I let the city lead me through its structure, but it was always my innate curiosity which consciously and sometimes subconsciously controlled my movements,” says Stawarska-Beavan.

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Invisible Narratives: New Conversations About Time And Place.

A rural ecologist, an urban drifter and a diasporic optimist examine the invisible layers underneath, the lost spaces on the edge and the forgotten places in between.

Some places are on the edge of time and memory. We see what is there and talk about what appears not to be there; objects no one wants to see.

Hearing in layers and listening to what others hear. For some people sounds are familiar because they are heard every day, for others they seem known yet unknown at the same time.

Understanding a place as it is experienced by those who know it well: what do they reveal and what will they share?

Remembering apparently unknown histories: trying to understand how you know a place well, but that you don’t necessarily know how this can be.

Examining the incomprehensible by picturing the sublime.

Lubaina Himid, January 2019