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Sounds of ideas forming

In 2012 I was short-listed for the Liverpool Art Prize. Set up in 2008, and inspired by the Turner Prize, The Liverpool Art Prize is a competition of contemporary art open to all professional artists based or born in the Liverpool region. I was awarded an Arts Council Grant and a Leeds Met University research Award totalling £2,750 to produce an installation of my ‘Sounds of ideas forming’ research that considers the relationships between contemporary curating and sound art. My presentation further considered the role of the archive, inspired by Gerard Byrne’s work at the 2011 Venice Bienniale.

The awards provided me with production costs on a set of three new 10m banners containing texts from my research into sound art, and a thousand copies of a 37-track sampler CD given away freely to the public. For the launch event, I commissioned artist Jeff Young and musicians Moongoose to perform a new 15-minute composition in front of the banners for the 300 visitors.

Located in the main engine room of a former railway station on the platform at Edge Hill Station, Metal was a suitable context for my work that often explores soundtracks to real journeys. I set up six display cases of ephemera and rare objects related to my research, including a fragment from Apollo 8 and a rare tin of ‘Bill Drummond’s International Grey’.

The exhibition offered me the opportunity to present, for the first time, the range of my research and reading material in one location and led directly to two further commissions in the form of ‘The Ghost Telegram’ [2012] and participation in the 2013 Composer’s Symposium at Metal.