'Sounds Like Her' exhibition

Gallery Oldham’s new immersive exhibition opens to the public on Saturday. 

It’s called ‘Sounds Like Her’ and is open until Monday, March 7, 2020. 

The touring exhibition, curated by Christine Eyene and produced by New Art Exchange, aims to explore sound as a medium and subject matter through immersive installations, paintings, print, drawing and video. 

The project brings together six female artists from diverse backgrounds, including Ain Bailey, Sonia Boyce OBE RA, Linda O’Keefe, Christine Sun Kim, Madeleine Mbida and Magda Stawarska-Beavan. 

The selected works represent sound in the broadest sense, exploring voice, noise, organic and synthetic sounds, rhythmic patterns, sonic structures and visual materialisation of sound.

The work featured in the exhibition include Devotional Series (1999 to present), an installation of placards from an 30 year old archive of black female singers performing in the UK; a multi-channel sound piece, The Pitch Sisters (2012), challenging the notion of a ‘preferred pitch’ of a woman’s voice; the video ‘Who/Wer’ (2017), which explores prints that have materialized through sound waves, the structure of sounds and words from the very first cry of her newborn son to the formation of his language and bilingualism.

Christine Sun Kim, who has been Deaf since birth, presents pieces exploring the materiality of sound. Her work unpacks the ‘social currency’ of sound and how it can be experienced through touch, sight and ideas. Hybrid Soundscapes (2017) is the result from three-years of research in Iceland, Spain, England and China. The piece considers the societal and environmental impact of sound pollution in the context of renewable technologies.

The exhibition also includes painter Madeleine Mbida’s colorful compositions of African dancers and chromatic reinterpretations of rhythmic patterns.

Rebekah Sutcliffe, Strategic Director of Communities and Reform, said: “This piece of work is an excellent addition to the ever-growing programme of events and exhibitions at Gallery Oldham.

“The exhibition is an interesting one as it covers a thought-provoking topic around sound art and features a range of women artists from diverse cultural backgrounds.”

“We’d like to thank Christine Eyene and New Art Exchange for making Sounds Like Her possible and I hope residents and visitors get the chance to explore the gallery piece.”

To find out more, visit www.galleryoldham.org.uk or call 0161 770 4653.