There is Ringing Inside, It is Evening
Solo exhibition at The Nave Spenard in Anchorage, Alaska
September 9th, 2023
There is Ringing Inside, It is Evening is a series of photographic, moving image and immersive sonic work created during two years following the sudden death of my partner. Together, my close loved ones and I gesture toward the space no longer occupied by his physical form, demarcated by framed emptinesses. The areas from which he is missing are shaped by our attention and interaction with veils, thresholds, and voids, and by our gaze towards the unseen. A central ritual bell is rung by the vibration of recordings of his voice wired into a kinetic device, and give reference to his middle name, Bell, reaching the audience at the level of the body by invisible and somatic means as the combination of recorded loop and actively generated tones are amplified throughout the gallery. Viewers move through and are moved by the installation in a former church hall, encircled with free-hanging prints floating off of the wall and weighted to the ground. This show is comprised of visions and tenuous connections.
The title of the show is derived from a poem by Paul Celan that Anne Carson translates in Economy of the Unlost, which stuck in my mind in the days following his death. The verse is about false sail - waiting reverently for a sign which comes too late.
Gorselight, yellow, the slopes
suppurate to heaven, the thorn
pays court to the wound, there is ringing
inside, it is evening, the nothing
rolls its seas toward devotion,
the bloodsail is heading for you.
Thank you to RJ Fontaine, June Daniel and Nolan Warner-Sullivan without whom the installation would not have been possible. Additional thanks go to The Nave Spenard, Griffin Editions, and Michael Zuhorski for supporting this work.
