The Relict 2019

sound sculpture

using sourced material onsite while I was artist in resident at Undercliffe Cemetery Bradford

Working in the cemetery marking the 100 years anniversary of the 1918 representation of the people’s act and women getting the vote and suffrage I wanted to make a noise in the cemetery in the remembrance of the women buried there.

At Undercliffe Cemetery while I was doing my research there I noticed that women where most often wrote down as Relict,Widow,Sister,Mother,Daughter. Not like the Men who are mostly wrote down by their profession.

I was drawn to the term Relict as stated in the Oxford dictionary not only as a term for a widow but also. A thing which has survived from an earlier period or in a primitive form. I explored ways of making a sculpture which spoke of these two meanings.

I wanted to create something that was natural that was of the environment.

The sculpture was made from knotweed, which grows at the cemetery but is seen as one of the most invasive plants in the UK. This material was a perfect metaphor for the work I felt, an invasive plant, a weed something that shouldn’t be there, seen, of no real use.

But also as a material to work with it was perfect. When dried out the stem is like bamboo and hollow inside creating a great sound when air travels through and around it.

built inside the bandstand of the cemetery the bandstand became part of the sculpture, the bandstand black, metal, hollow, a place to make sound, to stand, be seen.

the sculpture was amplified and during a live performance I played the sculpture.