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Anne Walsh “An Annotated Hearing Trumpet, Preface and Figures” & Chris Kubick “Surprise!”Post an Event »

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Martina Johnston Gallery

September 8 - October 29, 2012

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1201 Sixth Street, 2nd Floor
Berkeley, CA 94710 Berkeley, CA 94710
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Anne Walsh “An Annotated Hearing Trumpet, Preface and Figures” & Chris Kubick “Surprise!” Anne Walsh, detail of “AHT Preface: AW, LC, SA,” 3 Mounted Photographs, 22" x 30", 2012.
Martina }{ Johnston is honored to present an exhibition featuring the work of noted Bay Area artists Anne Walsh and Chris Kubick. Partners whose collaborative Double Archive projects have been exhibited widely, Anne and Chris will be sharing two distinct new bodies of work. Anne Walsh will be presenting "An Annotated Hearing Trumpet, Preface and Figures," a collections of intriguing photographic and text works that represent a highly personal response to the wild, defiant, carnivalesque, feminist book "The Hearing Trumpet" (written 1950) by the British-Mexican Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington (1917 - 2011). The images in the show could loosely be conceived of as illustrations for the book, or as an “evocation of a relationship,” a methodically subjective yet unaccountable collection of images found by the artist (or that found her) during her research into the book, travels to meet and converse with Carrington herself, and attempts to come to terms with the process of becoming a (fictional) old lady; Anne becoming Leonora, Leonora becoming Marian Leatherby - “the 92-year-old, toothless, vegetarian, and stone deaf narrator and protagonist” who sports a “short grey beard which conventional people would find repulsive,” but which she “personally” finds “rather gallant.” “She has a ‘death grip on [her] haggard frame as if it were the limpid body of Venus herself” (as Anne puts it in her "List of Characters".) This exhibition is the first part of an ongoing project that includes a manuscript for "An Annotated Hearing Trumpet," an illustrated book which “will sit somewhere between the genres of memoir, artist’s book, and biography” and will include historical and critical scholarly writing on themes from Carrington’s work. Anne is also developing plans for a feature-length film version of the book. Chris Kubick’s recent work “deals with the meanings associated with ‘sound effects,’ those sounds that are seemingly not ‘sound’ enough to simply be called sounds.” Martina }{ Johnston will be presenting his video Surprise!, the latest installment in an ongoing sound art series that makes use of his digital archive of film sound effects. Chris’ current series reflects a long standing interest in the way language is used to describe sound and builds on projects such as Language Removal Services. He notes that he “comes to this work in part through a long and happy association with the dark corners of B-movie Hollywood.” The video featured at Martina }{ Johnston is generated by a program coded by the artist that plays layered clusters of these sound effects. The composition is structured by the choices the artist made in categorizing these sounds, yet it remains indeterminate and open to unexpected events, resulting in an aural experience that is both mesmerizingly textured and startlingly abrupt. The visual component of the video consists of the titles of the audio files that appear as the sounds are triggered. These original filenames include descriptions of the sounds as well as obscure abbreviations and numbering systems. Reading these words in the context of listening to Chris’ composition stimulates the imagination with a kind of coded poetic imagery, while concretely referencing the people responsible for imagining, recording, and organizing these sounds. *Please join us for an opening reception on Saturday, September 8th, from 4 to 8 p.m.* Hours: Sundays 1 to 4 p.m. or by appointment Support for Martina }{ Johnston is provided by Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure Grant Program.
Anne Walsh “An Annotated Hearing Trumpet, Preface and Figures” & Chris Kubick “Surprise!” Chris Kubick, still from "Surprise!", DV, 2012.