RITA EVANS

TUNING IN A VACUUM

THE WORK

Tuning in a Vacuum (2022) is a 40 minute live performance where collaborations unfold around seven new sound-based sculptures. Blackbox is exhibiting video documentation of this performance.

In the performance, materials, space and sound play out in a politics of negotiation, the physicality of the sculptures' structural and audio qualities shape the dynamics of the performers' collaborations, as each encounter with the objects presents a new set of relations.

The theme of pairs runs through the piece. The bronze age Sussex trumpet, discovered down a well, is one of the earliest musical instruments from the area, and similar ancient trumpets have often been found discarded as pairs, suggesting their use in ritual.

In the performance, duets between objects and performers develop into trios, quads and quintets. They become multi-limbed with audio phasing and reverberations scaling from intimate to expansive. The live reflections and connections that the sculptures enable, go beyond their sound into a space where performers and sculptures merge with one another.

The textiles that covered the sound sails and the handmade costumes are inspired by the work of local artist Ethel Mairet whose textiles-based practice involved foraging local plants from the South Downs for natural dyes.

The installation's moving architectural sound sails are informed by my research while on residency at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation - where the Bauhaus stage opens out into the Bauhaus students' canteen, connecting different types of performative and communal spaces together.

BIO

Rita Evans (1980) is a British-Canadian artist based in London. Her works have been exhibited and commissioned internationally, including Camden Arts Centre, Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada and Archway Sound Symposium at Five Years Gallery, London. In 2020 Rita was selected for Towner International Biennial, and was artist-in-residence for her commission Theatre of Sound. In 2021, Rita was artist-in-residence at the Bauhaus Foundation in Germany, where her exhibition Instrument was on show at Gropius House, as part of Fictional curated by Florian Strob. In 2022 Rita’s solo exhibition Stringing the Matrix opened at Tate St Ives as well as a new major commission by Towner Eastbourne supported by The Foundation Foundation’s emerging artist award. 

About her practice

My sculptures, performances, workshops, drawings and films explore notions of presence, momentum and becoming. My process involves feedback methods of composing and improvising, to develop spaces of multiplicity, collectivity and communality. 

The sculptures become both actors and mediators of touch and movement. Each continues to evolve as part of a highly sensitive ecology of forms to explore a deep materiality of sound. 

These respond to the people and location they are created for – whether imaginary, site-specific or a combination of both. Chance and intuition remain intrinsic, where sometimes things happen and at other times they just crumble and collapse – my sculptures, drawings, soundscapes and diagrams document this continual process.

@evans.rita

https://ritaevans.com/