CCA Center for Contemporary Arts

Sarah Rose, Susannah Stark, Hanna Tuulikki

Lilt, Twang, Tremor

18 Nov 2017 - 14 Jan 2018

Sarah Rose, The Printer’s Devil, We’ll Smell Sweet, audio, 15min, 2015
Hanna Tuulikki, SING SIGN: a close duet, 2015. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Robin Gillanders.
SARAH ROSE, SUSANNAH STARK, HANNA TUULIKKI
Lilt, Twang, Tremor
18 November 2017 — 14 January 2018

For this exhibition, CCA invites three Scottish artists whose work examines the politics and production of voice. The human voice can mystify, calm, incite, deceive and betray. It can shift borders, change spaces and disturb our understanding of ourselves and our communities. Looking at how the voice takes shape in different places and environments, this exhibition explores the contexts in which voices are made audible. Examining the mouth, the mouthless voice, the embodied and disembodied voice, the voice as a tool, and as an instrument – the artists question the manner in which vocals affect the environment around us.

Sarah Rose’s practice results from an interest in how the voice constructs prejudices and bias, investigating the vocal transmission of information, such as rumour, translation and inflection. Responding to the limitations of printed text, she explores how the unwritten voice might reject a gendering of narrative. Her sculptural installations examine how objects hold sound and tell stories in space, and how information is shaped through its oral communication. Through an in-depth research in to specific materials, climates and histories, her work in this show aims to locate the political within sound, volume and material.

Susannah Stark focuses on the power and placement of the voice, questioning how language is used in a technology-driven, digital and capitalist culture. She has an interest in the mouth as modulator which shapes and organises culture, both as a bodily organ and a machine. With many works questioning how voice functions within the context of urban space, she investigates the translation of voice into material and cultural experience. Collaborating with musician Donald Hayden – and inspired by writings on the ancient Greek cynics – she merges the economic, cultural, spiritual and personal into a rotating narration of the contradictions of contemporary living, using digital media, sound, and song.

Hanna Tuulikki's work as a composer, artist and performer considers the voice as a meeting point between self and the world. She investigates the ways in which the body communicates beyond and before words, telling stories through imitation, vocalisation and gesture. Often exploring music and movement traditions across cultures, she is particularly interested in how bodily relationships and folk histories relate within specific environments and places. With a strong connection to landscape, nature and ritual, her works explore an ecology of the world through textured tapestries of performances, audio visual installations and visual score drawings.