Sound Soild Liquid Light

Sound Solid Liquid Light

27 July – 10 August

Two Queens, Leicester, 2024

Read the review by Janice Cheddie, a writer based in London, in Art Monthly.

Sound Solid Liquid Light Art - Janice Cheddie, 479, Sept 24

Two Queens, Leicester, 27 July to 10 August Incorporating sculpture, film and sound, 'Sound Solid Liquid Light' is a new collaborative installation of works by SJ Blackmore, Naomi Frears, Leila Galloway and Alice Mahoney. Each of the artists have independently explored varying aspects of the exhibition's title in their works. At Two Queens they have come together (some having worked collaboratively before) over the past several months to produce a polyvocal multimedia installation.

At the entrance to the gallery, Galloway has suspended several voluminous sheer organza barriers from floor to ceiling that catch the movement of air from passing bodies. Made out of stitched-together horizontal panels in shades of green, white and amber, the work's tactility and transparency offers a soft monumentality and spatially disorienting introduction to the exhibition, one that acts as a porous boundary to the works on show. It also reflects Galloway's interest in how temporal and spatial movements impact that the viewer's interaction with her work. The translucent fabric is illuminated by the nearby light of Frears's projected video, a shimmer that casts the rest of the exhibition space into an all-encompassing and undulating glow.

Frears's video is a meditation on the way flowing water not only contours and constructs the landscape, but also how its surface absorbs and reflects light. Such pastoral imagery is, however, transformed by Frears's use of visual montage, in which vignettes of behind-the-scene moments of the artists as they experiment and discuss how to collaborate and transform the gallery space are spliced, altered and inverted. The video was structured and edited by Frears in dialogue with Blackmore's accompanying sound work of short musical compositions; at points the two works seem to oscillate and combine to make an abstract representation of collaboration itself. The differing musical registers of Blackmore's work - restrained and rhythmic to rich and harmonic tonal passages - also shifts from calming to dissonant sounds, as if to parallel the moments of connection and tension in the act of making art collaboratively.

Similar sensory qualities are found in Mahoney's wood-fired, water-filled ceramic vessels, in which the vibrations of visitors movements are also visibly rendered in the ripples of the work's surfaces. Mahoney's installation visually punctuates Blackmore's 'Sound Solid Liquid Light', installation view immersive soundscape; the pair also have a longstanding musical collaboration in the indie band Disco Rococo, and the installation here looks as if it is part of some experimental music event waiting to be activated by a performer. Mahoney seems to utilise her museological background by meticulously placing small lumpen sculptures that have been hand-shaped on stacked domestic tables and stools that are discretely lit by miniature display lights. Microphones are positioned next to the clay forms to amplify the intermittent, multi-pitched tonal noises that emanate from within, as if to disrupt the otherwise static and immutable way in which objects are presented in museums. The ceramics were produced through a labour-intensive process in which the clay responds to the variations of heat within the wood-burning kiln. The interaction between the wood ash and organic materials present during the firing process produces a less predictable outcome, which Mahoney uses to compelling effect.

'Sound Solid Liquid Light' seeks to open up spaces in the artist's respective practices, which collectively engage with subjects of materiality and physical presence in our digital age. Since 2011, Two Queens Gallery, run by Gino Attwood and Daniel Sean Kelly, has provided a pivotal space for small experimental projects in the Midlands, away from commercial pressures. Sadly, Two Queens itself is not immune from economic uncertainties and is under threat of closure (a crowdfunding appeal has been launched). 'Sound Solid Liquid Light' is a timely reminder of the importance of these spaces, of coming together, and of their role in the artistic ecosystem.