A collaborative exhibition by Nicola Singh, gentian rhosa and Eo Stearn, curated by Mattie Roberts and supported by Listen Gallery in Glasgow. With live activation performance by Carle Gent and Eo Stearn
This iterative project explores our societal awareness and capacity for grief and healing, spiritual connection and resistance in the face of continued global, structural violences. Drawing on the use of voice and song in ritual devotion, healing, communal labour and grief practices my voice is a resting place is an invitation to listen and think through these ideas together.
All three artists work with different approaches, across a range of practices and reference points, while all employing cycles and repetition of their own voice.
https://www.listengallery.co.uk/home
Photographs by Miriam Ali
Featuring song scores I wrote, which were played on an analogue tape machine, recorded, mixed and mastered at Greendoor Studios in Glasgow.
"You are like no other
You are not alone
You Unlike to no other
Well on your way to lose the ego."
"Different forms of intimacy
Body as a microcosm
Body’s central nervous system." [EGO]
"Who we think from, who we think from, who is it that we think from?"
Rest - Who we care for, who we care for? Who is it that care for?" [CARE]
Mattie asked me to write something about the work I’ve made for this exhibition.
This project began with an exploration of the junctions where textile and sound meet. I was initially drawn to traditions like waulking songs—Gaelic labour songs predominantly sung by women—as well as protest songs. Everyday my heart screams Free Palestine!
Such leanings I believe reflect on the power of the mass and communal protest against oppression, occupation, the ongoing genocide in Palestine, state violence, transphobia, late capitalism and excessive consumerism.
I hope this project will go in the long term: toward a deeper investigation of communal and embodied sound practices. As a way to begin to comprehend the ongoing widespread violence.
What I do know is that it’s very special to capture and spatialise sound in the context of Listen Gallery. It has been a real seed of hope and that is a gift thanks to Riah, Mattie, Nicola and Genni.
What you see and hear here is my small offering more of an amuse-bouche—a first skim across the surface, the early years, the initial throw of the stone of such cogs thinking.
These works function as portals. They contain lyrics and poetry that eventually became songs. There is warmth in the analogue sound and voice captured, the reel aids thinking about the past and the future simultaneously and history existing in parallels.
The research is still forming. There isn’t yet the rigor or depth I hope to develop, but there is something—a feeling, a shadow dance of those early musings.
I’m thinking about these works as containers: ruminations, repetitions, loops, echoes, delays. The thoughts and tidal feelings that resurface—like memories, pangs, intuitions—embodied through both the mind and the body. I’m interested in the edges of sound. When does something become a song? When do scattered thoughts or endless notes—scribbled on paper or typed into my phone—start to form a rhythm, become phonetic, begin to speak?
I try to capture this web of thoughts in a way that allows each strand to operate independently.
The titles of the tracks are:
Stream
Otter
Care
Ego
Patient
This work was further inspired by my time on the Isle of Eigg in November, where I wrote the poetry pamphlet The River and the Tides are Changeable like People’s Minds—available during the exhibition.
One of the songs includes a field recording of a stream at the point where it flows into the sea—fresh and salty water meeting.
Otter is a cover of a piece of Scottish mouth music (or port-a-beul—“tunes from the mouth”) as sung by Dolores Keane and John Faulkner. All other songs are original material (keyboard, piano, voice and all instrumentation)
The textile work became an abstract archway painting, drawing on ideas of industry and the railways—thinking about the Industrial Revolution, the stripping away of handcraft, and the ongoing effects of colonial violence.
The audio was recorded, mixed, and mastered at the wonderful Green Door Studios in Glasgow. The fabric was painted and screen printed at Print Clan, also in Glasgow. Special thanks to these two incredible organisations for their continued support of artists—and, of course, to Listen.