graham dunning's rea garden residency show
Apologies for the poor quality of the scans. I may replace them later.
On Saturday I went to Graham Dunning's show at the Rea Garden in Digbeth, Birmingham. It's the culmination of his residency in the space through the summer and it's called Visitor Centre: An excavation of sound. You can read and hear more about the residency at Graham's project blog [http://grahamdunningreagarden.wordpress.com/]. If you plan to go the blog will provide some useful contextualising background.
I'd visited the space previously so I was fairly familiar with the layout of the garden and a lot of the materials Graham uses. Although you can explore the garden as you find it there is a roughly 19 minute audio guide that may not be what you expect but which I found absolutely central to the experience.
The garden is roughly triangular. If one of the flyers associated with the Rea Garden is to be believed it is around 21 metres long on one side and around 10 metres wide at its broadest. That seems a little large to me. I would have guessed something closer to 16m x 8m but I could easily be wrong.
You enter the space on one of the long edges, with the narrower edge immediately to your left. The other long edge opposite you leads to a large maybe 6 metre drop to a brick lined river and beyond that the Custard Factory buildings. To your right the two long edges converge and eventually meet a little way past a shed at the bottom of the garden that runs from wall to wall.
There are a few sheds in the space. Immediately right as you enter is a small shed used as an exhibition space. Beyond that and initially out of sight is a shed that houses homing pigeons. Then comes the shed at the end of the garden. To your left is a wall that has large empty windows now blocked by rusty metal sheets to either side and between them an empty double doorway that's blocked off. There's a small I think fire-damaged space beyond.
Running along much of the length of the opposite wall to the entrance is a short length of narrow-gauge rail track from a previous residency. In part used as a track for a camera. Beyond the shed at the bottom of the garden which is missing a back wall are some shrubby trees making the most of the limited space. So much for the bare outlines of the garden. What's of interest to us here is Graham's interaction with the space.
I'll start where I started in the shed at the bottom of the garden. There are two speakers inside the shed making irregular tapping precussive noises. A much larger speaker stands outside the shed right at the end of the garden beyond the shrubby trees. Initially it didn't seem to be making a sound and may not have been. Later though a low rumbling kind of sound came from it.
Also in the shed were a violin bow and a tin canteen hung on the wall as though they had been used together. Sounds some way into the audio guide suggest this was probably the case.
Outside the shed the majority of objects forming part of the show were at the other end of the garden and towards the middle. I mention 'objects forming part of the show' but this is misleading. In a sense given Graham's approach of partially excavating and responding to the site every object whether there intentionally or otherwise is a part of the show. It might be more accuate to say 'objects consciously selected and presented as part of the show'.
Most striking are an upright wooden railway sleeper on top of which a speaker is placed and near to that a deep hole around one metre square. I think the monolithic sleeper was already in place although Graham placed the speaker on it. The hole though is the main excavation Graham carried out and contains a brick floor and the remains of two brick walls. There are also the roots of a tree.
Graham recorded some sounds from the site with a microphone in the hole, and before that with a contact mic attached to the spade while he was digging.
A group of artefacts dug from the ground are arranged near the hole and at my visit the spade was also near the hole. A tilted wooden label carried a number.
Closer to wall you enter through and just the other side of the small shed from the entrance is a tray of shellac record fragments. Some have quite a bit of surface damage and at least one had a rough almost bubbled surface. I can't remember clearly now but I think the tray may have had a printed plastic number on it.
Behind the shed high on the wall in wooden frames with glass protecting them are a number of small relatively cheap photovoltaic briefcases. I believe these were used to power the speaker on top of the railways sleeper. I was not aware of any sound coming from that speaker during my visit.
Inside the shed another glass fronted wooden frame (like the others manufactured by Graham himself) in which a number of items excavated from the site were displayed with accompanying number labels. Simultaneously the most recognisable the most mysterious and to me the most impressive object is a record made from some fragments of shellac set in either vinyl or another similar substance.
On Saturday I went to Graham Dunning's show at the Rea Garden in Digbeth, Birmingham. It's the culmination of his residency in the space through the summer and it's called Visitor Centre: An excavation of sound. You can read and hear more about the residency at Graham's project blog [http://grahamdunningreagarden.wordpress.com/]. If you plan to go the blog will provide some useful contextualising background.
I'd visited the space previously so I was fairly familiar with the layout of the garden and a lot of the materials Graham uses. Although you can explore the garden as you find it there is a roughly 19 minute audio guide that may not be what you expect but which I found absolutely central to the experience.
The garden is roughly triangular. If one of the flyers associated with the Rea Garden is to be believed it is around 21 metres long on one side and around 10 metres wide at its broadest. That seems a little large to me. I would have guessed something closer to 16m x 8m but I could easily be wrong.
You enter the space on one of the long edges, with the narrower edge immediately to your left. The other long edge opposite you leads to a large maybe 6 metre drop to a brick lined river and beyond that the Custard Factory buildings. To your right the two long edges converge and eventually meet a little way past a shed at the bottom of the garden that runs from wall to wall.
There are a few sheds in the space. Immediately right as you enter is a small shed used as an exhibition space. Beyond that and initially out of sight is a shed that houses homing pigeons. Then comes the shed at the end of the garden. To your left is a wall that has large empty windows now blocked by rusty metal sheets to either side and between them an empty double doorway that's blocked off. There's a small I think fire-damaged space beyond.
Running along much of the length of the opposite wall to the entrance is a short length of narrow-gauge rail track from a previous residency. In part used as a track for a camera. Beyond the shed at the bottom of the garden which is missing a back wall are some shrubby trees making the most of the limited space. So much for the bare outlines of the garden. What's of interest to us here is Graham's interaction with the space.
I'll start where I started in the shed at the bottom of the garden. There are two speakers inside the shed making irregular tapping precussive noises. A much larger speaker stands outside the shed right at the end of the garden beyond the shrubby trees. Initially it didn't seem to be making a sound and may not have been. Later though a low rumbling kind of sound came from it.
Also in the shed were a violin bow and a tin canteen hung on the wall as though they had been used together. Sounds some way into the audio guide suggest this was probably the case.
Outside the shed the majority of objects forming part of the show were at the other end of the garden and towards the middle. I mention 'objects forming part of the show' but this is misleading. In a sense given Graham's approach of partially excavating and responding to the site every object whether there intentionally or otherwise is a part of the show. It might be more accuate to say 'objects consciously selected and presented as part of the show'.
Most striking are an upright wooden railway sleeper on top of which a speaker is placed and near to that a deep hole around one metre square. I think the monolithic sleeper was already in place although Graham placed the speaker on it. The hole though is the main excavation Graham carried out and contains a brick floor and the remains of two brick walls. There are also the roots of a tree.
Graham recorded some sounds from the site with a microphone in the hole, and before that with a contact mic attached to the spade while he was digging.
A group of artefacts dug from the ground are arranged near the hole and at my visit the spade was also near the hole. A tilted wooden label carried a number.
Closer to wall you enter through and just the other side of the small shed from the entrance is a tray of shellac record fragments. Some have quite a bit of surface damage and at least one had a rough almost bubbled surface. I can't remember clearly now but I think the tray may have had a printed plastic number on it.
Behind the shed high on the wall in wooden frames with glass protecting them are a number of small relatively cheap photovoltaic briefcases. I believe these were used to power the speaker on top of the railways sleeper. I was not aware of any sound coming from that speaker during my visit.
Inside the shed another glass fronted wooden frame (like the others manufactured by Graham himself) in which a number of items excavated from the site were displayed with accompanying number labels. Simultaneously the most recognisable the most mysterious and to me the most impressive object is a record made from some fragments of shellac set in either vinyl or another similar substance.
These fragments are aligned so that they can be played and indeed on the audio guide there is a section where a low hissing and what it becomes apparent is surface noise is occasionally interrupted by faint sepulchral flurries of recorded music. No louder than the surface noise and easy to miss but just about recognisable. I shall refrain from any burbling about hauntology and direct you to almost any issue of Wire magazine in the last three years.
That's unfair to Graham. I think the audio guide is a really interesting sutained piece of work in itself that illuminates the space. It will also be a different experience depending on how you choose to explore the garden and what external sounds there are. Like the objects in the garden it can be ambiguous as to what sounds are on the audio guide and what sounds are happening now in the world outside the garden.
I like this ambivalence of objects and sounds. It suits the nature of Graham's intervention and seems to say a lot about the nature of art. How we assign value to objects, where that value resides, and how both time and art change the meaning and utility of objects. Processes to which of course any art object itself is also subject.
The rusted metal panels where the windows used to be on the wall that makes the shorter edge have pieces of slate suspended on string that tap and shift against the metal. Below them are contact mics attached to the panels. This apparently is the source of the percussive noises in the shed at the end. These I think are also numbered.
I've mentioned the ambiguity of objects a couple of times but haven't given any examples. Close to the shed at the end is an old clay bottle with a clay stopper attached to it on a section of wall. This may or may not be part of the exhibition but either way it's a wonderful object.
There's slightly more childish fun to be had. I spent time standing on the stack of railway sleepers at the wider end of the garden rocking one that moved slightly at either end. At the other end of the garden I went through the shed and climbed up in the scrubby trees to look down at the river from a more precarious position that merely looking over the lower wall in the main part of the garden. Then there's the simple timeless pleasure of walking along the railway line - either from sleeper to sleeper or along the rails.
I think the show is really good. You need to give it a degree of attention but that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned. I very much hope Graham does make the audio guide available in some form. I'd also be interested in just the sound of the reassembled record(s) being played which has a fragile liminal quality that's really quite beautiful. Go along and enjoy yourself. It's free and Birmingham really has quite a lot going for it. Except on Saturday when my friend and I visited, when all the small independent galleries locally were closed.
You have until Sunday 3 October to catch the show. The garden is open daily 11 am - 4 pm. Open until Saturday 9 October at Solihull Arts Complex is the group show A site of no special interest giving a history of the project space to date. I don't think I can get to this which is a shame. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who does go.
Comments
A couple of minor points which might or might not be of interest to you: the vertical railway sleeper was erected by myself; the speaker on top of it is acting as a microphone, the sound from which is played back through the large speaker in the shed (the low rumble); The clay bottle was not an object I positioned but had come accustomed to over my time on the site, to the point where I stopped noticing it was there.
Thanks again. The audio recordings will be available in the next couple of months.
graham