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
“Architecture does in stone what music does in sound. In other words, it is visual vibrations that are affecting us, and we are inside the symphony as it were. We are being affected emotionally by the vibrational nature of that particular building. When we go into a building, we are resonating to its harmonies and proportions. Cosmic principles are all in one way or another inextricable related to certain numbers: an interplay of numbers that gives rise to geometry, harmony, proportion and measure. There’s no mistaking the different emotional affects of buildings just as there is no mistaking the difference between the emotional affect of a Bach entrada and a Led Zeppelin rock song. They are different from each other, and the reason they are different is because of their harmonies and the numbers that are involved within them.”
– American lecturer and writer in Egyptology, John Anthony West
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.
Born in 1984 in Switzerland to Russian parents but growing up in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, Austria and Estonia, Evy Jokhova is currently based between London, Vienna and Tallinn. In 2013, Jokhova finished an MA in Political Communications from Goldsmith’s College after completing an MA in Fine Art from the Royal College of Art in 2011. Jokhova’s research-driven, multi-disciplinary practice engages with dialogue and relationships between social anthropology, architecture, philosophy and art and includes drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, film and participatory events. In 2016, Jokhova was awarded one of the Royal British Sculpture Society’s coveted Bursary Awards and has recently returned from a productive three-month residency at studio das weisse haus in Vienna. In 2017, she will return to Vienna for another three months, having been presented with the Belvedere Museum’s Curator/Researcher-in-Residence Award. Recent group exhibitions in 2016 include: We work in the dark…, Rye Creative Centre, Rye; Shapeshifters, Arthouse1, London; and Telling Tales, Collyer Bristow Gallery, London. Recent solo exhibitions and projects include: Mimesis, Westminster Reference Library, London (two-person, 2016); Evy Jokhova: Sketch for a British Business, Lubomirov/Angus-Hughes, London (commissioned site-specific work, 2015); Allotment: Revolution, SALT Beyoglu, Istanbul (participatory event, 2014); The Reading Fly, Schauraum, Vienna (2009). Selected group exhibitions include: COUNTER_FITTERS, Geddes Gallery, London (2016); Prison Drawing Project, Scarborough (2016); No-One Lives in the Real World, Standpoint Gallery, London (2015); Three Little Pigs screened at Facing Extinction: Gustav Metzger, James Hockey Gallery, UCA Farnham (2014); Recording Britain Now, Millenium Gallery, Sheffield (2014); A Future Pump House, Pump House Gallery, London (2011); and Custom Made, Barbican Art Gallery, London (2010).
