Contribution (Sound element) to Lubaina Himid Exhibition at Tate Modern, London Reduce the Time Spent Holding (2019) Blue Grid Test (2020) Old Boat New Money (2019 Naming the Money (2004) Fashionable Marriage (1987)

Abstract

My contribution to the Lubaina Himid exhibition at Tate Modern in 2020/21 has, in her words, been pivotal. Five sound pieces thread through the show pulling and pushing the audience from scene to scene, using the galleries themselves and bringing the speakers into the foreground.

My own sound-work Reduce the Time Spent Holding (2019) opens the exhibition and sets the scene for the debates around making and architecture which occupy the first room.

As the show unfolds, our collaborative work Blue Grid Test (2020) holds the space with my six-channel sound-work in conversation with Lubaina’s twenty-five metre painting which together surrounds the audience.

Old Boat New Money (2019) has at its heart the sound of the Atlantic. My soundwork at the centre of Lubaina’s wooden structure helps to evoke the ocean itself and the boats which made endless journeys with captured Africans to the Caribbean.

In Fashionable Marriage (1987) a satire on the art world of 1980s the music of Zanzibar plays with Handel’s Entrance of The Queen of Sheba my contribution in this case centres on making the most of the timing of the sound as it dominates and then retreats drawing audiences nearer to the action.

In the final room my 2017 composition for the installation Naming the Money (2004) changes the emphasis of the piece, which is exhibited here without the 100 cut-outs. developing it further from the telling of slave narratives into a call to audiences to consider their futures.