How can sound be used to surface untold or hidden stories surrounding artworks? Does sound allow us to form new relationships with and connections to art?
Responding to these questions, artist Joshua Woolford has created six new sound pieces for the Tate Britain collection. Throughout their residency, they have explored how sound opens up new ways to engage with artworks through both theory and practice.
This afternoon celebrates the potential of sound to create dialogues with artworks through talks, sound pieces and live performance. Following their talk and performance, Woolford will be joined by Kenichi Iwasa and Zein Majali for a jam session responding to the selected artworks. We will then move into the gallery for live sound performances in front of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's Razorbill 2020 by Nkisi, Tereza Delzz, Tia Simon-Campbell (Sippin’ T).
Woolford will also respond to Oscar Murillo’s Manifestation 2019–2020 and read words by Morgan Totah on her experience of collecting soap sounds in the West Bank, Occupied Palestine, next to Mona Hatoum’s Present Tense 1996.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Razorbill 2020, on display in Room 28
Oscar Murillo Manifestation 2019–2020, on display in Room 28
Mona Hatoum Present Tense 1996, on display in Room 26
Ingrid Pollard The Cost of the English Landscape 1989, online
Ronald Moody The Onlooker 1958–62, on display in Room 16
Glyn Warren Philpot Repose on the Flight into Egypt 1922, on display in Room 14
Over the last 12 months, Joshua Woolford has created and shared live performances at the Queer and Now festival in June 2023 and the Late at Tate Britain: Desire, Culture and History in August 2023. They have hosted a sound workshop with local youth organisation City Lions and held a reading group between Tate and iniva with PRIM, the platform for queer Black storytelling.
Woolford has actively explored the power and potential of ‘building communities around questions’. Throughout the residency, they have collaborated with a number of artists and musicians including Tawiah, Lie Ning, Nkisi, Tia Simon-Campbell (Sippin' T), Tereza Delzz, Zein Majali, Kenichi Iwasa, Anne Duffau and Nwakke.
In response to Mona Hatoum's Present Tense (on display in Room 26), Woolford has connected with Radio Alhara and Learning Palestine to create a sound piece. They have included elements from their 12hr radio programmes, excerpts from Jayce Salloum’s interview with Soha Bechara, alongside field recordings of artisanal soap-making in the West Bank of Occupied Palestine, recorded by Morgan Totah from Handmade Palestine. Through building these networks and dialogues around artworks, Woolford surfaces new narratives around Tate’s collection.
Tia Simon-Campbell (Sippin’ T)
Sippin’ T is a DJ and Space Maker based in Kingston, Jamaica and born in South London, UK.
Consistently returning to the question: “becoming someone new or returning to myself” Their practice is inherently political, highlighting inter generational trauma, colonial legacies, ancestral traditions and gender through gathering, sound and visuals as a call to finding home within while understanding collaboration under capitalism.
As a DJ they seek to reclaim the texture and multiple faces of electronic music from a Global Majority perspective, a sonic journey fusing nature with technology, ambient with club, the past with presence. Spiralling us toward freedom and joy.
https://www.instagram.com/_sippin_t/
https://on.soundcloud.com/QZgQaqTRVmobS9iH9
Zein Majali
Zein Majali is a Jordanian-Palestinian artist currently based in London where she completed her MA at the Royal College of Art in 2022. Formerly an engineer and data analyst, she turned to the arts out of an urgency to archive and examine the accelerated cultural shifts in the Arab world. While her work touches on a post-colonial and globalised Middle East, her primary area of interest is the internet and its effects on both geopolitics and community. Her practice includes moving image, sound, performance, installation and AI.
https://www.instagram.com/zeinxmajali/
https://soundcloud.com/zeinsukkar
Kenichi Iwasa
Kenichi Iwasa is a London-based improviser and multidisciplinary artist from Japan. He plays a variety of instruments including trumpet, flute, percussion, and handmade woodwinds, combined with electronics. His main practice is focused on pure improvisation. He is currently working on developing new ways of self-improvisation for his solo project.
He has collaborated with visual artists and musicians such as Beatrice Dillon, Maxwell Sterling, Jesse Kanda, and Neneh Cherry. Iwasa is also known for his legendary Krautrock Karaoke night. Recent live and recording collaborations have been with Linder Sterling, David Ornette Cherry, Tyson, Denardo Coleman, Rebecca Salvadori, Jesse Kanda, Viagra boys, Alexander Tucker, Alexis Taylor, Visio, Heith, Finley Clark, Lutto Lento, Blood Music and more.
Nkisi
https://www.instagram.com/nkisiii/
https://nkisi.bandcamp.com/album/blk-splls-2-2