Mute
Mute
1997
Media: mixed media
Size: (dimensions variable) / C type photograph (documentation) 700 x 590mm
Exhibited:
2013 – Unruly Objects (one-person exhibition), Cornerstone Gallery and Arts Centre, Didcot, Oxfordshire
1999 – Taking Stock (one-person exhibition), Keele University Art Gallery.
1997 – “…from the institution." (one-person exhibition), Stoke-on-Trent City Museum and Art Gallery.
About this work:
As an object Mute (1997) is a conundrum. Mute – like Sluice- is an assemblage of altered readymade parts, the main component being a school descant recorder painted in a deep flesh tint using mannequin aerosol paint. Into each of the holes that run along the shaft of the recorder an earpiece of the type used for listening to a crystal radio set is inserted, plugged in tight by the use of a rubber grommet. Because these earpieces are manufactured using flesh coloured wire and clear plastic they resemble hearing aids, and closely match the colour of the painted recorder. At the time I made this work, I became intrigued by the visual codes used by institutions, including colour, material, scale and space. I was interested in the effect of utilising any and all of these factors in my work as a ‘visual vocabulary’ in which I could both evoke a spark of recognition and confound expectation to bring about new imagined possibilities and ideas in the minds of audiences. Specifically, Mute came into existence after having developed an interest in prosthetics through my work as an orderly in a general hospital, where my duties had involved—amongst many other things—cleaning up the workshops of the skilled makers of artificial limbs, eyes, ears and noses. However, Mute has the feel of a prototype. As an object it poses more questions than it provides answers. How can music be made through an instrument where all the holes are blocked? What can you hear through each earpiece? How can this instrument enhance the functions or experiences of the human body? The juxtaposition of material elements presents a stifled and silenced, dreamlike object, in which a sense of denial and of silence far outweighs any suggested enabling auditory possibilities.
