eco - blast - trace - step in stone echo 2 -sculpture, sound installation, live performance, drawings

Sculpture, sound installation, live performance, drawings

Artist: Rowena Pearce
Composer: Helen Ottaway
Sound Designer: Alastair Goolden
Trumpet: John Plaxton

Commissioned as part of Step in Stone arts trail, (August – October 2015) curated by Fiona Campbell.
Thanks to Halecombe and Whatley Quarries for permission to record quarry machinery.

We deal in chance encounters and coincidence. I found a tiny fossil in a rock – “it’s the end of a rugose coral” the geologist said “the rest is inside the rock and it’s shaped like a trumpet”. Later, in the quarry we found another trumpet shape – the remains of a piece of masonry half buried in the scree.

Rowena has made rocks before, smooth shapes to conjure the beginnings of life on earth. Now, along with these ancient forms, there are cut pieces, jagged edges, and small shards, the legacy of man’s intervention.

The quarry is our theatre and the spectacular natural soundbox for our soundscape.

We present stones that aren’t real, bird song played by trumpets and, from the trees, the ghost sounds of quarry machinery that is long gone.

ECHO - sculpture and sound installation, Westdown/Asham and Fairy Cave Quarries, Mendip, Somerset

ECHO

Sculpture and sound installation, Westdown/Asham and Fairy Cave Quarries, Mendip, Somerset


The ECHO soundscape can be heard and purchased from our online shop.

Eco blast Trace - musical art

BLAST

Live performance of trumpets, Westdown/Asham and Fairy Cave Quarries, Mendip, Somerset.


Trumpets – John Plaxton and Jack Vincent

TRACE - Papier mache, pigment, PVA, metal, music, found sound, drawing, Black Swan Arts, Frome, 3 - 18 October 2015

TRACE

Papier mache, pigment, PVA, metal, music, found sound, drawing,

Black Swan Arts, Frome, 3 – 18 October 2015

Exhibited in the gallery is what remains: the product, the image, the sound, and the memory after quarrying and after our creative interventions in the quarries. A gabion of small sculpted stones, drawings, music, and sound are transported from the quarries to the gallery.