Stuart Bowditch

Stuart’s practice is rooted in places and communities that exist on the fringes, both geographically and socially, with a particular interest in the sonic landscape, capturing overlooked and overheard noises and using sound as a documentative and creative medium. An autodidact, Stuart uses his time spent listening to and with others as an opportunity to connect, learn and create. His current project The River Runs Through Us, in collaboration with painter Ruth Philo, is a year long exploration of the River Stour (Essex and Suffolk), using walking, swimming, sound and film to engage with the landscape and those that live within it. It has led to the creation of the River Stour Festival and a new project called River of Words, capturing the lives of volunteers whose hard work has keep the river accessible and healthy. How we experience a place, especially through sound, has been a focus of several projects and installations working with Deaf artists. Location based tactile sound installations made with Damien Robinson include Vibe Cube (2009-2011), Vibe Cube C (2009) and Signpost 2011, all of which enabled audiences to feel sound as well as hear it. Public art commision Aperture (see picture) with Deaf artist Christopher Sacre, enabled members of the public to see and hear the local landscape before it is redeveloped with housing. As well as listening, he also creates sound and has been making music since his teens, first through drumming and then through sampling, programming and improvisation. He is particularly interested in exploring the sonic qualities and textures of non-musical objects and spaces, processing, arranging and presenting them in a new form. Thematically collections of work centre around: location: E2 & E8 (Cotton Goods 2010) and Bastion (Awkward Formats 2015) materiality: Objects Studies - Metal (Rural Colours 2013) and 12 Inch Polycarbonate Disc (Courier 2017) and donated objects: Thirty (Fbox Records 2012). Suffolk