Some concluding thoughts on the 2010 residency from Helen Scalway:
I was astonished by the very well attended closing event. The drawings were inspired by sounds past and present hovering together in the church and Jane Ponsford, the imaginative co-ordinator of St Georges, happened to remark that it would be good to hear them being sung. Once these words had been said I knew I just had to make it happen so the closing event should echo the performativity of the drawings.
So I had invited the talented early music soprano, Sophia Brumfitt, whom I had heard sing in another church, to ‘sing the drawings’ for this one. To my great relief she expressed interest and came to spend time to lookand to reflect. What might ‘singing the drawings’ mean? How might she combine a phrase from the composer Purcell , whose music would have been new just about the time when some of the church’s finest memorials were erected, with sounds such as the clickings of the thoroughly twenty first century central heating system in the church and the rattle of the current keys to its doors, while also making reference to my own visual use of the contemporary recycling symbol on dustbins just outside the church?
Sophy’s response was intelligent, fresh and unexpected. I hope eventually to give a url here to the video which came out of it. In the mean time here are some images.
