Private View: Wednesday, 9th November, 6.30 – 8.30pm
Artist in Conversation with Architect Umberto Bellardi Ricci: Wednesday, 23rd November, 6.30 - 7.30pm
The Chapel at the House of St Barnabas
1 Greek Street, London W1D 4NQ
Marcelle Joseph Projects proudly presents Staccato, a site-specific interactive audio-visual installation by London-based multi-disciplinary artist Evy Jokhova in a Gothic Revival chapel in the heart of Soho built by British architect Joseph Clarke between 1862 and 1864. Exploring the interconnection between music, movement and ceremonial architecture, Jokhova has created three new sculptural works accompanied by an original musical score made in collaboration with James Metcalfe. Her new work attempts to examine the relationship between sound, image and form, using the architecture of the chapel and its specific acoustics in conjunction with a series of sculptural objects made from sound insulation foam, mirror card, perspex and wood and an avant-garde musical score. Two pillar-like sculptures, mimicking the architectural details of the space but with a Modernist twist, will inhabit two of the four apses in the church and a third sculpture will hang from the ceiling. The musical score, made by first creating drawings that systematise the architectural model and plans of the chapel and then transcribing these drawings into music, will emanate from various speakers and intrigue the viewer with its abstract, experimental sounds. The title of this exhibition, Staccato, refers to the 2013 article by American architectural theorist and landscape architect Charles Jencks entitled “When Architecture Becomes Music” where Jencks considers the inter-columniation of buildings as a staccato composition, suggesting that structures composed of singular solid forms placed at regular intervals ‘induce the feeling of finality by the absolute contrast” between solid and void and light and darkness.
Inspired by the 1877 quote from English writer and critic Walter Pater (1839 – 1894), ‘all art constantly aspires toward the condition of music’, Jokhova proposes to fuse form and content in this exhibition and examine this fusion’s influence on architecture and the individual. Looking at architecture as “frozen music” and rehashing academic research suggesting that music and architecture are generated by the same mathematical principles and have a cosmic connection, Jokhova has produced a spiritual sanctuary where the viewer generates the harmony in this Modernist sound and sculptural installation.
An artist’s book will accompany this exhibition and will include a short introduction written by curator Marcelle Joseph and a text written by architect Umberto Bellardi Ricci. If interested in viewing or buying the publication, please email Marcelle Joseph on marcelle@marcellejoseph.com. The texts will be available on the website: www.marcellejoseph.com.
