Sound of storms inspiration for new exhibitions
After the winter storms ravaged north Northumberland, two artists got to work. DAVID WHETSTONE met them ahead of an exhibition opening today
THE visual legacy of the storms that battered the Upper North Tyne includes trees lolling like drunks and log piles following unscheduled felling.
But it’s the sounds of the storms that inspired two artists whose work will be shown today and tomorrow at Highgreen, north Northumberland base of VARC (Visual Arts in Rural Communities).
Since January, Portuguese sound artist Gil Delindro has been lending an ear to this wildly beautiful landscape, as he has done previously in the Sahara, the Brazilian rainforest and the Swiss glacier where he was working when a friend told him the VARC residency might be up his street.
Musician Marc Rigelsford, from Manchester, has performed at Glastonbury and released two albums – with a third to follow shortly – under the name Magic Arm.
His influences are eclectic. One reviewer described his second album, Images Rolling, as “a kaleidoscopic mixture of live instruments, pleasantly ambling soundtracks and moments of orchestral splendour, all intertwined with suggestive tinges of psychedelic rock”.
Gil studied architecture in Porto before switching to sculpture, but music had been an interest since he started drumming as a child. Moving to Germany, he was drawn to Berlin, mecca of experimental music.
“Everyone who works with sound is in Berlin,” Gil says.
Since the pandemic curtailed travel, he has moved back to Porto. But he has worked worldwide establishing himself not as a musician but as an artist specialising in sound-based sculpture.
“Sound is the first thing I think about when I go into a landscape,” he says. “I tend to choose isolated places that have some extreme weather and normally I start by doing field recordings. All my work is research-based. Wherever I am, I make recordings and then create a sculptural piece.”
When studying architecture, his main interest was acoustics, the quality of sound in a space. It fed into his art, as did a lifelong love of hiking – alone, at night, in the snow, it didn’t matter.
Aged seven, he was diagnosed as chronically myopic but he reasons this sharpened his hearing. “If you have to go close to something to see it, you hear it better.”
Hiking around Highgreen, he would choose places to record, adding to an archive of sounds that might or might not become part of a gallery exhibit.
Having rejected a life of designing buildings, it is the ephemeral that attracts him.
“With sound it’s more about the experience than the object,” he says.
“Sounds really change a lot. It depends on the wind or sometimes there can be animals passing that don’t pass that way again for months.”
He doesn’t often record animals, he says, but made an exception during the VARC residency.
“I have made weird recordings of sheep here. There must be some sort of food but suddenly they’ll start moving and going crazy on the hills.
“When you listen without knowing it’s sheep, it becomes abstract, a kind of droning. It was completely new for me.”
Gil uses hydrophones (underwater microphones) to catch nature’s subtler sounds.
“When I arrived, there were lots of trees fallen and I recorded while applying pressure to branches with older branches underneath.
“Recording when I’m interacting with materials can give different textures of sounds.”
Gil hasn’t decided exactly what form his weekend exhibition will take although gathered fleeces and abundant sawdust offer clues.
Relaxed about this, he heads outside to demonstrate his technique for capturing the sonic rumblings of a gnarled survivor of the storms.
Marc Rigelsford first came to Highgreen to house-sit for a friend. He hired a piano and has stuck around for four years, helping and collaborating with artists.
He does have a plan which he outlines in the solid but shabby former dairy.
A patterned rug is the start of its transformation into a cosy haven from an imagined storm. He envisages standard lamps and embroidered chairs with a “warm atmosphere” the aim.
Here visitors will assemble to hear a recording of another friend, Majorca-based musician Holly Lowe, reading Wind, a poem by Ted Hughes.
Entranced by Holly’s reading, he says: “It doesn’t need a crash bang of music. The drama’s in the words so I’ve gone for something quite undramatic to accompany them. It seems to work.”
He’s enjoying the process of deciding how people will experience his new creation which has also been supported by Revitalising Redesdale’s Community Heritage Fund and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
“It’s something I’ve never had to consider. When you’re producing albums you can’t really dictate how people will listen.”
Marc’s new sound piece and Gil’s end-of-residency exhibition will be on show with a display by the Women Artists of the North East (WANE) Library.
This was set up in 2017 by artists Holly Argent, Tess Denman-Cleaver and Taryn Edmonds.
You can visit today (11am to 4pm) and tomorrow (noon to 3pm) at Highgreen, Tarset NE48 1RP or on May 23, 24 and 25 by appointment only (email helen@varc.org. uk).
Find further details at www.varc. org.uk