Aftermath brings together new works by Sophie Hayes and Huma Mulji which explore the artists’ shared interest in how the representation of place can be used as a vehicle for the communication of psychological and emotional states.
Hayes and Mulji’s works are presented as two concurrent solo exhibitions in collaboration with two of Bristol’s newest artist-run venues KIT FORM and The Launderette, which are situated less than 5 minutes’ walk from each other in the city’s Stokes Croft district.
Curated by Foreground director Simon Morrissey and emerging from an extended research dialogue between the two artists, the project brings together Hayes’ new work – which uses sound to radically author the viewers psychological perception of the photographic representation of a mundane location – with Mulji’s site-specific installation that suggests the devastated aftermath of human displacement through sculpture and material intervention.
Hayes’ installation for The Launderette depicts a non-descript rural fly tip in an unspecified location through two large scale photographs – the aftermath of illegal waste disposal. Piles of discarded domestic furniture that lie on the left and right-hand side of a dead-end road are split into two images. These images are accompanied by an intrusive abstract audio composition that dominates the viewer and projects a sense of mounting anxiety and trauma into the uneventful rural location in the images. This composition is accompanied by a second soundtrack in the adjoining rear space. Two small speakers mounted on stands, which loosely suggest human figures, are positioned opposite each other. Garbled sound emanates first from one speaker then the other – a mixture of interference and distortion reminiscent of a broken conversation. Together, the seemingly disparate elements of the installation build to suggest the gaps in understanding that result from opposing viewpoints that fail to connect.
Colleagues and friends who met in Bristol in 2017 despite coming from very different parts of the world, Hayes and Mulji engaged in an in-depth research dialogue during the making of their new works for Aftermath. This dialogue saw them record the inspirations, insecurities, pressures and preoccupations that made up the 8 months before the exhibitions through candid ‘letters’ they wrote to each other over email.
Shared as a screen-based text work at both the gallery sites and online, the letters between the artists provide their audience with intimate access to the private intellectual and emotional questions that led to Aftermath.
