Tabatha Andrews

Artist's Statement

To me, sculpture is a means of visualising the invisible, by giving material form to those things we can sense but not see: in particular, sound, light and emotion. Working with traditional materials like glass and bronze, as well as sound, video projection and performance, I am constantly questioning the dominance of sight and the language of opposites in Western Culture and attempting to create a more fluid approach to form. I am interested in the point at which language breaks down, and communication becomes a primitive state. With particular emphasis on the metaphor of the human voice, I have attempted to construct a sculptural language from the broken edges of a verbal and written one.

More of a pulsating repetition of events than a narrative, and usually silent, my use of projected video manipulates light and image to slow time and create an experience of interiority. Video (I See) was made from 16 mm film footage of a human larynx singing.

Filmed under a strobe light, and with all sound removed, the resulting projection creates a flickering environment of overwhelming physicality, in which sound becomes light. The glottis is repulsive and disturbing, representing our break with and connection to the animal. In appearance the vocal folds resemble genitalia or the stoma of a plant, a word originally meaning 'mouth' in Greek which is connected to the word 'stamma' or 'animal'. 'Barbarian' in its Sanskrit derivation means a foreigner, one who speaks unintelligibly, a stammerer, someone 'other'.

The voice expresses a union of soul and body; an image, print or cast of the body, with all its spoken and unspoken histories. Forbitten Words, a series of 25 unique bronze casts, gives the human voice heavy, visceral material form. Using a series of semi-fluid substances, forms were sculpted by my mouth and cast into bronze. Each cast is an expression of the repressed, of sounds, feelings and desires that cannot be articulated within language. They act as a kind of 'transitional object', neither within the body nor without it. They are a kind of crude 'recording', a cast of an event through time. I am interested in the idea of creating a work that is 'blind' in its making, that brings the buried and hidden to the light.

A lot of my work is site-specific and cross-disciplinary in nature, involving collaboration with a range of organisations and individuals. From sound works broadcast on the radio and webcast to home computers, to public art works in historical buildings and public museums, the work occupies many sites and contexts.

Mappamonumentalis (2000) was made for the Monument to the Fire of London. An A to Z map of London was spun into a thread, then suspended on the path of the old plumbline of the building to penetrate spaces normally unseen.

I am presently Artist-in Residence at Gloucester Cathedral. The residency runs for a year, and I am working on pieces in glass, sound, weaving and video projection. I am particularly interested in questioning the point at which spirit and matter come together as sculpture; where does the body and soul begin and end?

Tabatha Andrews 2002

CURRENT WORK AT GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL

On Breath 2002 glass and lead, 12' x 4'6" x 16". Sited in Gloucester Cathedral Triforium.

2002 'Precursor' Century Gallery, London
2002 'It Was Bigger Than All of Us' Prenelle Gallery, London
2001 'Communicating at an Unknown Rate' The Old Armory, Kensal Green, London
2001 'Amidst Concrete, Clay and General Decay', Konstfack Gallery, Stockholm

2001 MFA Show, Slade School of Art

2000 'Noise-Information and Transformation' Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Cambridge, curated by Simon Schaffer and Adam Lowe
2000 'Slade Engine' Dolland St Warehouse, London
2000 'Headcleaner' performance for 'Macademia' at Bloomsbury Theatre, London
2000 Broadcast and webcast of 'Rufflette' on Fourth Wall FM (curated by Sasha Craddock and Cathy Haines of PADT)
2000 'Punctuation' performance at 291 Gallery, London for 'Transeuropean Express'
2000 Screening of 'Cadence', a collaboration wtih Marie-Gabrielle Rotie,The Lux Cinema
2000 'Zero plus One' organised by Christopher Ho, Columbia University, New York
1999 'O', collaborative performance with Rotie for Leicester New Works Festival
1999 'Gratuitous' Metro Cinema, London
1999 'Phonomena - the site of sound' Intermedia Gallery, Glasgow
1999 'Browsing 2' The Changing Room, Stirling
1999 Bankside Browser: Tate Britain Exhibition at St Christophers Church, Southwark, London
1998 Oriel Mostyn Open, Wales
1997 'Blades', two person show, Kingsgate Gallery, London

SOLO EXHIBITIONS:

2000 'Mappamonumentalis' at the Monument to the Fire of London
1998 'Rufflette' sound installation at the Glasgow Independent Project Space

2002-3 Artist-in-Residence, Gloucester Cathedral
2001 Slowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, USA. Three month residency: Visiting artists including Carolee Schneeman, Vic Munoz, Shirin Neshat, Robert Creeley
1998 'Semi-subterranean': Collaborative month-long residency for artists and architects, Scottish Sculpture Workshop, Aberdeenshire (funded by National Lottery)
1995 Artist-in-Residence, Dumbarton Academy, Glasgow, ten weeks (Strathclyde Council)

2001 Skowhegan Residency
2001 Dolby Scolarship from Slade School of Art to research sound and silence in the USA
2000 Arts Council of England bursary to attend the School of Sound symposium on voice and the moving image
1996 Camden Council small assistance grant
1995 GSA scholarship (also funded by Peter Palumbo) to visit James Turrell, Frank Lloyd Wright's 'Taleisin West' and the deserts of Arizona

2001 Public Art Journal (Mar) article on "Mappamonumentalis' by Peter Suchin
2000 'Noise', Kettles Yard publication of Noise exhibition
2000 (Sep 6th) The Times - Preview for Mappamonumentalis
1998-9 Articles published in Issues two and three of 'British Mythic', published by Joanne Tatham and Tom O'Sullivan
1998 'O'er Gang': publication resulting from residency at Scottish Sculpture Workshop