Bosse & Baum, London
Candida Powell-Williams
Bosse & Baum is pleased to introduce a new work by Candida Powell-Williams: Sonic Arrangements in the Infinite Fill. This 20 minute soundtrack builds on a singular bell ring that is synthesized and layered over itself becoming increasingly urgent, rhythmic and complex.
For this digital presentation the audio is disembodied from it’s source – a handmade ceramic bell in the shape of a figure which motionlessly rests on a platform elsewhere. The music plays with notions of duality; contrasting meditative sounds with temporal, frenetic and mechanical phrases. The first half of the piece is a slow and passive incantation that becomes disorientating as it develops, playing with echos and reverbs and warping the bell ring’s cadence. By reversing the reverb the ring mimics breathing whilst the clicking metronome, a sped up heart beat, asserts a sense of order that the music constantly refutes by falling in and out of sync with it.
Powell-Williams’s ongoing series of bells (2018- present) are based on 7th-6th century BC goddess idols which are believed to have signified the forces of nature and the onward march of time. CPW’s versions are dressed in helmets, necklaces and masks and are holding various symbols, crystal balls, snakes, hares and other emblems. Each one refers to and accompanies the artist’s wider research and through these forms she also explores empowered female figures.
This sound piece was originally conceived to accompany a live performance in Northern Ireland in collaboration with the local based Echo Echo dance company on Derry City Walls and Walker Plinth as part of the artist’s solo exhibition at Void Gallery in 2019. Sound, movement and costume combined to explore the dualism of repelling and attracting, taking the transformation of the city walls from defensive architecture to tourist attraction as the starting point. Likewise, bells historically both repel and attract; they are worn to fend off evil spirits and simultaneously denote the time of worship therefore bringing people to them. The piece finished on the Walker Plinth which was built in 1826 with a 25 m high column of George Walker and then blown up by the IRA in 1973. The hope for the site now is to place temporary works upon it which are universal rather than political.
About Candida Powell-Williams:
Candida Powell-Willliams creates installations which play with the relationship between sculpture, live performance and animation. Her research–based and process led sculptural practice is guided by questions about human attempts to understand our body in the universe through the connection between objects, action and belief. Powell-Williams’s sculptural landscapes are often a response to researching the slippage that occurs to the meaning of historical artefacts over time, aiming to confront our relationship to memory and storytelling. She manipulates historical narratives, plucking references from disparate eras, folding them into the present and condensing them into a singular experience. Using a range of materials and textures CPW references the vast language of the ever shifting meaning of symbols from architecture, industrial inventions to talisman, rendering them physical in modular forms or prop-like sculptures characterised by their wobbly geometry and apparently dissolving edges. Fabricated in sweet colour gradients the surfaces appear worn down like disneyfied relics. Fleeting performances explore gesture, touch and the permeable boundary of our bodies to the external environment and kinship to the animal kingdom. These interactions are documented in stuttering layered animations permeating the work with notions of time, presence and absence and addressing the changing nature of sculpture, performance and storytelling in the digital age.
Biography
Candida Powell-Williams (born 1984, lives in London) graduated from the RCA, London in 2011. Selected exhibitions and performances include: “The Gates of Apophenia,” Bosse and Baum London (2019), “Command Lines,” Void Gallery, Northern Ireland (2019) “Lessness, still quorum,” performance, Serpentine Galleries, London (2018); “Boredom and its Acid Touch,” Frieze Live, London (2017); “Tongue Town,” Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo (2017); “Cache,” Art Night Associate Programme, London (2017); PIC performance festival, Melbourne, Australia (2016); “Coade’s Elixir,” Hayward Gallery, London (2014). In 2018 Powell-Williams was artist in residence at the Warburg Institute London, was awarded the Mother Art Prize in 2018 and in 2013 was recipient of the Sainsbury Scholarship at the BSR, Rome. In 2019 common-editions published Powell-William’s tarot deck and artist book. In 2021 Powell-Williams will have a major new solo exhibition at Southwark Park Galleries London.
About the gallery:
Bosse & Baum was founded in 2014 by Alexandra Warder and Lana Churchill. The gallery occupies a 700 sq. ft. unit in the post-industrial Bussey Building, in Peckham, South East London, and is expanding into online spaces. We are a commercial gallery seeking an active role in shaping art discourse by giving a platform to contemporary positions; representing an international roster of emerging artists whose work challenges dominant historical narratives and is socially engaged. We work to facilitate broader social access to art and contribute to the wider critical conversation on contemporary art through a public programme of exhibitions, talks and performances. We encourage inclusive participation and conversation within the gallery, whilst supporting the growth of the gallery’s artists into a broader dialogue that includes private and institutional collections. We care greatly for our audiences of artists, collectors, curators, and all those interested in looking and learning, from seasoned professionals to curious newcomers. We continue to champion female artists: the gallery represents more female artists than male artists, still one of only a few galleries in the world to do so. We work to create the conditions in which experimental art practices can thrive, exhibiting challenging media such as performance and installation, and developing the models that secure their visibility in historically conservative markets.