about the artists
Photographer Tim Wainwright’s work presents the interaction of the present moment with something timeless. He reflects or intuits how such moments show the interplay between the psychological, material, and spiritual aspects of our reality.
His residency at Harefield continues a 15-year exploration of the four essential elements of being human - the mind, body, heart and spirit. Throughout this time, he has found ‘art’ in his investigation of the nature of suffering and transformation whilst working with concepts of witness and voyeurism - particularly with regard to the camera and its subject.
In Allowed to Speak (1994 –1997), Tim documents, in words and images, the lives of people living with long term mental illness. His focus moved from mind to body during a residency with cancer patients, where he produced We Are All The Same (2002 – 2005). Both works show the surface tension arising from the coming together and falling apart of inner and outer worlds or boundaries, intimating what lies beneath or behind. They also reflect the moral and intellectual questions relating to the representation of the four elements of being human. “As with Arbus, there is no sense of hierarchy in these portraits … on some level they are all self-portraits.” (Charles Darwent, The Independent)
With exhibitions on both sides of the Atlantic, Tim has also shown more abstract work. In a review of ‘Atlantic Revisited’ – a series of images taken in Europe and America – Dr Eric Bookhardt concludes: “Photography is the most democratic of all art forms because of its uniquely direct relationship with the world around us. In this work, Wainwright reveals that art is where you find it.” It is an approach that Tim brings to all his work.
Sound artist John Wynne makes work which explores the boundaries between speech and sound, sound and music, documentation and abstraction. His project with click-languages in the Kalahari Desert resulted in an award-winning composed documentary for BBC Radio 3 as well as a photographic sound installation described in the Wire as “impressive sound sculpture”. Currently he is working on an installation for the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver with his recordings of Gitxsan, an endangered indigenous language in British Columbia.
John has created large-scale multi-speaker installations in public squares: The Sound of Sirens was banned by the City Council of Copenhagen for allegedly “frightening and confusing the public” while Response Time in Toronto was described by one reviewer as “an ambient, ghost-like presence”. Other installations using auditory warnings of his own design have shown at Kiasma, Helsinki’s Museum of Modern Art, at the Goethe Institute in London and at the Open Ears Festival in Canada. He has also created installations using discarded but working hi-fi speakers in Berlin (Fallender ton für 207 lautsprecher boxen) and Hull (230 Unwanted Speakers): according to one writer, the Berlin piece “sounded like Heaven …and Hell.”
John has a PhD in Sound Art from Goldsmiths College, University of London and is a Senior Lecturer at the University of the Arts London. Upcoming exhibitions include the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, Beaconsfield Gallery in London and a half-hour piece commissioned by BBC Radio 3.
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