Exhibitions
AFTERMATH
New work by Sophie Hayes and Huma Mulji
Preview: 15th March, 5:00pm - 8:00pm
Aftermath brings together two new commissions by Sophie Hayes and Huma Mulji for the first exhibition in Foreground’s Document and Location programme, which explores the artists’ shared interest in how the representation of place can be used as a vehicle for the communication of psychological and emotional states.
Hayes and Mulji's new works are presented as two concurrent solo exhibitions in
collaboration with two of Bristol's newest artist-run venues KIT FORM and The Launderette, which are situated less than 5 minutes’ walk from each other Stokes Croft.
Curated by Foreground director Simon Morrissey and emerging from an extended research dialogue between the two artists, the project brings together Hayes’ new work - which uses sound to radically author the viewers psychological perception of the photographic representation of a mundane location - with Mulji’s site-specific installation that suggests the devastated aftermath of human displacement through sculpture and material intervention.
Hayes’ new installation for The Launderette depicts a non-descript rural fly tip in an
unspecified location through two large scale photographs – the aftermath of illegal waste
disposal. Piles of discarded domestic furniture that lie on the left and right-hand side of a
dead-end road are split into two images. These images are accompanied by an intrusive
abstract audio composition that dominates the viewer and projects a sense of mounting
anxiety and trauma into the uneventful rural location in the images. This composition is
accompanied by a second soundtrack in the adjoining rear space. Two small speakers
mounted on stands, which loosely suggest human figures, are positioned opposite each
other. Garbled sound emanates first from one speaker then the other – a mixture of
interference and distortion reminiscent of a broken conversation. Together, the seemingly
disparate elements of the installation build to suggest the gaps in understanding that result from opposing viewpoints that fail to connect.
At KIT FORM, Mulji will present a site-specific installation that conjures the idea of another space, perhaps some form of workshop, that has been relocated into the gallery’s post-industrial space. The windows that make up KIT FORM’s glazed elevation have been blanked out and are taped to hold its now broken panes together. Fragments of walls from other spaces lie around the space discarded, electrical components hanging from them. Loops of electrical wiring hang from the ceiling or are piled up. Crude wooden stools act as matter-of-fact supports for a family of blunt blown glass vessels that nestle against burnt indentations in the wooden objects, as if they have scorched the surfaces they rest on, on contact. It is unclear whether these things are simply the results of industrial manufacturing, or laborious repurposing processes, but the glass objects also suggest they are some form of traumatised body inhabiting the scenario. Dislocated and displaced, Mulji’s installation talks of the complex losses embedded in so much migrant experience – being made no longer part of where you are from whilst neither belonging to the place you are now in.
Aftermath brings together two new commissions by Sophie Hayes and Huma Mulji for the first exhibition in Foreground’s Document and Location programme, which explores the artists’ shared interest in how the representation of place can be used as a vehicle for the communication of psychological and emotional states.
Hayes and Mulji's new works are presented as two concurrent solo exhibitions in
collaboration with two of Bristol's newest artist-run venues KIT FORM and The Launderette, which are situated less than 5 minutes’ walk from each other Stokes Croft.
Curated by Foreground director Simon Morrissey and emerging from an extended research dialogue between the two artists, the project brings together Hayes’ new work - which uses sound to radically author the viewers psychological perception of the photographic representation of a mundane location - with Mulji’s site-specific installation that suggests the devastated aftermath of human displacement through sculpture and material intervention.
Hayes’ new installation for The Launderette depicts a non-descript rural fly tip in an
unspecified location through two large scale photographs – the aftermath of illegal waste
disposal. Piles of discarded domestic furniture that lie on the left and right-hand side of a
dead-end road are split into two images. These images are accompanied by an intrusive
abstract audio composition that dominates the viewer and projects a sense of mounting
anxiety and trauma into the uneventful rural location in the images. This composition is
accompanied by a second soundtrack in the adjoining rear space. Two small speakers
mounted on stands, which loosely suggest human figures, are positioned opposite each
other. Garbled sound emanates first from one speaker then the other – a mixture of
interference and distortion reminiscent of a broken conversation. Together, the seemingly
disparate elements of the installation build to suggest the gaps in understanding that result from opposing viewpoints that fail to connect.
At KIT FORM, Mulji will present a site-specific installation that conjures the idea of another space, perhaps some form of workshop, that has been relocated into the gallery’s post-industrial space. The windows that make up KIT FORM’s glazed elevation have been blanked out and are taped to hold its now broken panes together. Fragments of walls from other spaces lie around the space discarded, electrical components hanging from them. Loops of electrical wiring hang from the ceiling or are piled up. Crude wooden stools act as matter-of-fact supports for a family of blunt blown glass vessels that nestle against burnt indentations in the wooden objects, as if they have scorched the surfaces they rest on, on contact. It is unclear whether these things are simply the results of industrial manufacturing, or laborious repurposing processes, but the glass objects also suggest they are some form of traumatised body inhabiting the scenario. Dislocated and displaced, Mulji’s installation talks of the complex losses embedded in so much migrant experience – being made no longer part of where you are from whilst neither belonging to the place you are now in.
