Output details

Volumes of Stone

'Volumes of Stone' was a solo exhibition of three works, completed between 2010-13, curated by Nav Haq (MuKHA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp), in the framework of Curated_by Vienna, which commissioned curators to make an exhibition in response to the theme, ‘Why Painting Now’. The works in the exhibition examined the interpretive use of sound as a process of visualization and formulated complex questions around the reforming of identities and the representational possibilities for the image. The works explored different paradigms for the image, reflected in different forms of image and representation: 3D laser-scanning, digital photography, sculptural forms, police identification, and the sonic images of a voice composition. Modulation of light and dark, visibility, transparency and obscurity, between the different elements of work and its surrounding architecture, activated the viewer’s gaze on other levels. 3D laser-scanning of territory was brought into relation with the auditory scanning of listening. In the new work 'Hole', the conventional lightbox format is de-constructed: digital image, light source and holding structure are exposed. The image is a 3D scan of a Liverpool demolition site, once a dockers’ neighbourhood; a black ‘hole’ in the centre of the image marks the blind spot directly beneath the scanner, where it is unable to record data. 'Untitled (3”18)' is a lightbox (2.4 x 1.1m) with a high-resolution photograph of one brick taken from the demolition rubble – an optical image of museum archival quality. This ‘traumatised material’ is accompanied by an audio composition of the voices of two men who have suffered physical or mental trauma: a war veteran and a man who has had a stroke, leaving him with aphasia. Their voices bear audible traces of their traumas, bringing specific materiality to this immaterial medium.