- Venue
- Online Exhibition through April 2021 from the Glitterball Showroom
- Location
- Sweden
This international online opportunity is born out of Enköping, Sweden inviting an artist to have an online solo exhibition. Glitterball celebrates and creates opportunities to be ‘part of a wider community unrestricted by geography or proximity’.
https://glitterball.se/online-exhibitions/1-30-april-elena-thomas-drawn-in/
Stourbridge, UK based artist Elena Thomas has been invited (over the month of April) to share work from her Arts Council Funded project Drawing Songs. A vital interim opportunity to gather, make public and introduce a studio practice that combines song writing, sound gathering and drawing. This online exhibition presents eight images of ink, watercolour and gesso drawings alongside three songs/sound pieces. Her sound work has been produced by Birmingham, UK based musician/producer Michael Clarke.
Listening, looking and wondering about the expanded field of a studio practice as music builds and images flip from one to the next to the next. I find isolating the images from the web page the most satisfying way to experience the two together, a concentrated abstract image on a black background amongst surround sound.
With their sophisticated and layered production the songs suggest a textural infill to the spare and pared back line drawings. These perform as abstract spacial geometries, carved by a subtle pallet of earth hues. Each image introduces a steady and methodical two-dimensional disquiet amongst the rich layering of sound and voice.
The consistent and repeated lines appear to tease out elements within the musical strata. My imagination takes a ride as if a tiny element of sound has been placed under a microscope and analysed for a data that can be heard and felt but not seen.
Curious captured sounds of the day-to-day, rain on a car roof, a nib across paper have been sympathetically woven around Elena’s voice and vocals. The soundscapes and material elements of making bring to life the ‘themes of touch, relationships, and cause and effect – how one person has an effect on another’ that are the on-going source of inspiration and fascination within Elena’s work.
The exhibition continues until the 30th April and I look forward to the final developments of this ACE Funded project.
