My solo show in London is now over. A review by Daniela Cascella in Frieze magazine is here.
Installation no 2 for high and low frequencies. This new site-specific installation ran as a solo show at Angus-Hughes Gallery in London in April 2012.
I have a video piece (collaboration with Tim Wainwright) in this huge survey show of sound art at the ZKM Institute in Karlsruhe, Germany. The show runs until January 2013.
A new audio work based on environmental recordings I made in and around the Gitxsan reserve at Kispiox, British Columbia, will be part of the Sounds (Extra)Ordinary exhibition organised by The Centre for Art Tapes in Halifax, Canada. The show opens February 1 and all the works will also be broadcast on CKDU FM and other stations across Canada.
John Abram (CN)
Audio Lodge (CN)
Laura Cameron and Matt Rogalsky (CN)
Marla Hlady (CN)
Francisco López (ES)
John Wynne (UK/CN)
Rachel Woolmore-Goodwin (CN)
I was recently commissioned to make a new radio piece based on some of the materials from my work with speakers of the endangered indigenous language Gitxsanimaax in northern British Columbia. The True Language will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday January 31 during a programme called Short Cuts which starts at 3pm. The theme of this episode is Lost for Words.
Aleks Kolkowski recorded my installation Beating Tones and Flapping Wings last year on a wax cylinder. Here is the recording. You can barely hear the installation, but the recording is all the more intriguing as a result.
Detail of my recent site-specific Installation no 1 for high and low frequencies. It shared the space with Kate Terry's thread piece. The exhibition, Air I Breathe was curated by Mila Askarova.
As well as commissioning the large site-specific installation above, curator Mila Askarova of Gazelli Art House also asked me to show this piece, Hearing Loss, originally made in 2006.
I have two pieces in this group show in London, new installation plus Hearing Loss, a piece from a few years ago. Also in the show are Little Whitehead, Kate Terry and Yoonjin Jung. Click here or the image left to view the invitation. Click here for the press release.
I was recently Head of Jury for an interesting (and possibly unique) "soundscape composition contest" in the city of Joensuu in Finland. The 9 shortlisted works were played on a 100 speaker sound system permanently installed in a pedestrianized zone of the city.
I'm somewhat cynical about competitions - I think it means something if you win, assuming the judges have been attentive and conscientious, but it can mean very little if you don't win. We probably missed some work which would have sounded great on the street, but we couldn't hear all 143 entries on the public system, so most entries had to be eliminted on the basis of hearing them in less than ideal circumstances. Entries came from all over the world, but we were unanimous in awarding first place to a piece made by a local artist.
Contents:
- Audio CD with a 45-minute recording of the installation
- Bouncing off the Walls, a split-screen video by Pete Gomes
- An Aesthetics of Pressure, an essay by Brandon LaBelle
I don’t consider myself a ‘theatre person’, but I was approached to do the sound design for a production of Racine’s Andromache by Scottish director Graham McLaren, who is known for his challenging adaptations of the classics. I liked his open, experimental approach, so I took it on, and working with Graham and the cast for Necessary Angel in Toronto turned out to be a joy.
NOW Magazine: John Wynne's sound design and Andrea Lundy's stark lighting grip us in fear as we sit on all four sides of a square that could be a military barracks, common area or interrogation room somewhere in a Middle East war zone.
The Torontoist:
The language, set, costumes and sound design (a barely noticeable, persistent, low throbbing that at points builds into the sound of a jet overhead) results in one of the most successful modern adaptations we've seen in recent memory.
The Globe and Mail:
You might come away from this Andromache seeing it as a scathing commentary on shallow western values. You will come away knowing you've seen a thrilling reinterpretation of a classic.
Image: Arsinée Khanjian as Andromache
Anspayaxw, a 12-channel sound and photography installation, has just opened at the 'Ksan Museum gallery in Hazelton, British Columbia. The museum is in Gitxsan territory near the Kispiox reserve where the recordings and photographs were made in collaboration with Denise Hawrysio and linguist Tyler Peterson. Runs until October 31, 2011..
A symposium about auditory spatial awareness and the perception of sound in architectural space to mark the release of an enhanced audio CD of my installation for 300 speakers, Pianola and vacuum cleaner.
6–8 pm Wed March 23
Podium Lecture Theatre
London College of Communication SE1 6SB
Hugh Huddy (Writer and accessibility expert at the Royal National Institute of Blind People)
Paul Bavister
(BFLS Architects and The Bartlett School of Architecture)
Ross Brown (Central School of Speech and Drama)
and a site-specific performance by Bob Levene
An hour-long talk at Clocks and Clouds, an event presented by In the Dark, an organisation dedicated to curating, commissioning and discussing challenging works for radio involving spoken word. March 5, 2011.
ITU, the surround sound video made by Tim Wainwright and myself, is showing on February 7 at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin as part of Liminality, a programme devised by artist and physician, Ciara McMahon. Tim and I will participate in a discussion on the work on the 7th, and Transplant, the video published with our book, will show on February 9.
Accepting the award for Sonic Art at the British Composer Awards 2010 from Jude Kelly, Artistic Director of the South Bank Centre in London. The award was for the installation for 300 speakers, Pianola and vacuum cleaner.
The judges described the winning work as "aurally and visually mesmerising, involving a resonant and enigmatic sound world. A highly structured composition with a visual impact."
Listen to BBC Radio 3's coverage of the awards...
Mexican art magazine Taxi has reviewed the Newspeak show at the Saatchi Gallery which featured the 300 speaker installation. Click on the left to see the article.
...John Wynne has achieved international reverberation with this exhibition...
This show at The Saatchi Gallery has now closed. See here for press coverage and documentation. With John Wynne’s untitled installation of 300 speakers, amplifiers and other impedimenta I have no doubt that I am in the presence of a work of art. I do not pretend to understand it. I know only that, alone in Gallery 10 where the ceiling is exceptionally high, these grey, brown and black bits and pieces of our technological lives combine in an odd grace as they climb the walls in one corner. They recall, and trounce, Rachel Whiteread’s failure with white plastic boxes in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern and Anish Kapoor’s red-wax-in-the-corner cannon piece in the RA, but Wynne’s profound sense of order makes their disorder and haphazardry seem ridiculous.
Brian Sewell, The Evening Standard
Cage would have enjoyed this. The most disconcerting thing, however, is a long length of vacuum-cleaner hose that snakes from a doorway and between the speakers to the pianola. The hose quivers, writhes and slithers about, as a hidden Hoover powers the pianola. It's like sharing the room with an awakening python.
Adrian Searle, The Guardian
Beating Tones and Flapping Wings was a two-part installation at Wilton's Music Hall in London commissioned for the Cut and Splice Festival and made in collaboration with Denise Hawrysio. Click on the image to the left for a short video clip. Click here for more information and the publication Cut & Splice: Transmission.
... John Wynne‘s deft installation exploring the aural illusion known as the Shepard Phenomenon, as well as a book of interviews and essays edited by Sound Threshold‘s Daniela Cascella and Lucia Farinati and designed in the style of photocopied electronics manual, added to the impression of Cut & Splice as a celebration of inventiveness, interference and hands-on sonic practice, as well as a conduit for radio’s more mysterious qualities.
Frances Morgan, Frieze Magazine
Anspayaxw is a 12-channel installation with phtographs by Denise Hawrysio shown at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver during Border Zones: New Art Across Cultures. The work will travel to other galleries in Canada in 2011/12 Click here for an essay by Kate Hennessey entitled Asymmetrical Translations: The art of John Wynne.
Click below for an interview about this work
Hearts, Lungs and Minds, a half-hour composed documentary for radio was broadcast for the second time on BBC Radio 3 in December 2009. This piece is based on recordings made with Tim Wainwright while we were artists in residence at Harefield Hospital, one of the world's leading centres for heart and lung transplants. It can be heard, along with another of my works for BBC Radio, at the Sound and Anthropology website of St Andrews University in Scotland.
Click below to see a short film about the Transplant project
featuring interviews with John Wynne and Tim Waiwright on StaticTV
Faster Higher Strongeris a 5-channel installation which makes use of publicly visible graphic subversions of the Olympic rings gathered from various sources. It was exhibited in Sound Proof 2, a recent exhibtion in London about the Olympics curated by Monica Biagioli.
Transplant
A book and DVD
edited by Victoria Hume and designed by Fraser Muggeridge Studio Includes a 35-minute video by John Wynne and Tim Wainwright
A collection of essays with a wide range of perspectives on the Transplant project and the wider issues it raises by contributors including David Toop, Magdi Yacoub, Marcia Farquhar.
Available through rb&hArts: arts@rbht.nhs.uk
A book edited by Cathy Lane and published by CRiSAP (Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice)
Contributions from artists including Laurie Anderson, Ansuman Biswas, Jaap Blonk, Brandon LaBelle, Katharine Norman, David Toop, Trevor Wishart, John Wynne, Pamela Z
Click here for more information on the book A double audio CD of work by contributors was released in 2010
Autumn Leaves: Sound and the environment in artistic practice
A book with 27 free downloadable audio tracks edited by Angus Carlyle and published by CRiSAP (Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice). The accompanying audio compilation won a 2009 Qwartz Electronic Music Award in France
Contributions from artists including Peter Cusack, Jem Finer, Christina Kubisch, Phil Niblock, Hildegard Westerkamp, Chris Watson, John Wynne
Click here for more information on the book Click here to download the audio tracks
Between Art and Anthropology: Contemporary Ethnographic Practice
Edited by Arnd Schneider and Chris Wright, this book "provides new and challenging arguments for considering contemporary art and anthropology in terms of fieldwork practice." Contributors include Steven Feld, George Marcus, Lucy Lippard and John Wynne
Cut & Splice: Transmission
Edited by Daniela Cascella and Lucia Farinati, this publication includes interviews with and statements by all artists in the Cut & Splice: Transmission festival, newly commissioned texts, reprinted historical texts and interviews, graphic scores and archival material. Featuring Antonin Artaud, Ed Baxter, Jaap Blonk, John Cage, Nicolas Collins, Douglas Kahn, Jakob Kirkegaard, Sharon Kivland, Tetsuo Kogawa, Brandon LaBelle, Max Neuhaus, Carl Michael Von Hausswolff, Gregory Whitehead, John Wynne and others
An excerpt from Response Time appears on this CD featuring work played on an underwater speaker system which has toured swimming pools around Europe and throughout the UK.
Other artists on the CD include Hildegard Westerkamp, Yoshi Shinagawa, Erik De Luca and Spax Click here for more information
