The participating artists deal with the ‘sociality’ of music, the processes at work in the production and consumption of music within particular social and historical circumstances. Their works reflect upon various types of sound, song and music, varying from background music, national anthem, choir music, and the Islamic call for prayer. Arrangements and processes implicit in the production, reception or consumption of these are being examined through various artistic strategies. Inextricably linked to this are implications for the highly debated issue of cultural and social identity. This is not to say that music merely reflects or expresses existing social and cultural differences; issues of region, race, age, gender, language, or class are very significant to our understanding of music.

By including Luke Fowler’s experimental documentary on the composer Cornelius Cardew (1936-81) and Justin Bennett’s newly commissioned work about the disrupted performance of a musical piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen in 1969, For the Birds directly refers to a period in time when issues about inclusion, exclusion and participation caused heated debates in the Western music world. This notion of participation, hierarchy and manipulation evokes the issue of songs and music in the (semi) public sphere, as an activating, manipulative or social binding tool, a notion very much present in the other works in this exhibition.

[1] Cage, John. For the Birds: John Cage in Conversation with Daniel Charles, New York: Marion Boyars, 1981, p. 11: ” … he asked me … whether my title was merely a joke. I said: No. I am for the birds, not for the cages in which people sometimes place them.”

Exhibition originated by SMART Project Space, Amsterdam. www.smartprojectspace.net.

For the Birds: Artists’ Walkround
Saturday 11 September, 1pm
Free but booking essential
Book via events@sitegallery.org or call 0114 281 2077.

Join some of the artists from the exhibition in an informal walkround and talk about their work.

Join some of the artists from the exhibition in an informal walkround and talk about their work.

Current offers

• Hire a space at Site Gallery for your meeting or event and receive 50% off refreshment costs!

• Book two dates and we will reduce the charge of your second booking by 50% (offers exclude catering)

Offers apply to all bookings placed before 1st October 2010.

Site Gallery is just a few minutes walk from Sheffield train station – reach us by rail from London in just over 2 hours, 40 mins from Leeds and 50 mins from Manchester.

For more information on our Corporate Hire options visit the corporate hire section of our website or contact Jane Faram at hires@sitegallery.org or call 0114 281 2077.

The 330 sq ft unit offers a central location with excellent transport links, 24 hour alarmed access and rent inclusive of electricity and heating rates.

For more information call 0114 281 2077 or email john@sitegallery.org.

Made of intricate coloured velcro strips, the work aims to link our reception and shop area with our new cafe, due to reopen in September.

More on Tobias Rehberger:
Tobias Rehberger was born in 1966, Esslingen, Germany and from 1987 to 1993 he studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts, Frankfurt. In 2009 he won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the 53rd Venice Biennale. Previous solo exhibitions include The chicken-and-egg-no-problem wallpainting, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2008), On Otto, Fondazione Prada, Milan (2007),  I die every day, 1 Cor. 15,31, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2005) and in 2003 … please, thank you, Gallery of Stuttgart and Private Matters, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. The artist lives and works in Frankfurt, Germany.

Find out more on Tobias Rehberger here.

Denise Robinson is an independent curator and writer and previously Head of Artistic Programme at Arnolfini and Visiting Fellow for Historical and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College and Visiting Fellow at Tate Britain. Denise curated the Cyprus Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2007. Denise discussed Epaminonda’s work and presented a screening programme to complement the exhibition.

Free but booking is essential by phone or email. Please mention the name of the event in the subject line. Tel. 020 7486 0295, ext 108; email: bookings@romanianculturalcentre.org.uk

The publication documenting the two-year international SHOPS project was launched in London at The Ratiu Foundation and included a talk about the project from artists Rebecca French and Andrew Mottershead, hosted by British author, historian and curator Dr Mike Phillips OBE.

The book is now available in the gallery’s bookshop, please contact shop@sitegallery.org.

Find out more on FrenchMottershead’s SHOPS Project exhibition here and see some images of the event here.

Epaminonda works in a variety of media from collage to film, installation and book works. Often in her work there is a collapsing of time and space, folds of time exist in both her videos and collages, decisive cuts bringing together different parallel worlds and times.

Walter Benjamin said that “history breaks down into images, not into stories” and Epaminonda’s work similarly avoids narrative – the artist suggests that it should not be read for cultural or historical significance, but simply for how the images resonate together. Yet despite the diverse nature of the works, the disparate images, viewed together, inevitably draw us to form a narrative, based on our own associations.

In one work a series of objects, a mix of artefacts from non-specific ancient cultures, are positioned on coloured background and filmed. The objects appear as still lives, but are subtly animated as the fluctuating light of the sun creates an animistic shadow. The objects are uncategorised, but linked by being repositories of time and history each with an untold story. In the context of an adjacent projection which centres around scenes from the Acropolis and Pompeii, they become like micro monuments to time. The still lives are then replaced by the pages of a book containing narrative illustrations, including of foundation myths such as the Garden of Eden. In contrast, the second film focuses on a classical civilisation which is in a state of entropy or decay.  Like the still lives, this second film often seems to be a still landscape, but is animated by the fluctuating light of the sun which lends different dramatic effects, and by the occasional tiny moving figures or animals in the landscape, documents to time passing, as the title of the exhibition – Chronicles – suggests.

In another film, the only action to be seen is the slight movement of a tree caused by the wind – again a natural element is the prime mover in an otherwise still scene. This series of films have much less editing than previous works which montaged and manipulated found and new footage. The editing here is in the selection of the scene to be filmed which is then left mostly unedited, lending a more observational feel, but an element of chance is allowed to enter in terms of the subtle fluctuations in natural conditions. The sound accompanying the work, (produced for the exhibition by musicians ‘Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides’) also focuses on natural sounds, manipulated and melded with haunting instrumentation.

In another film there is a specific action – a car drags an olive tree along a landscape, watched by a pack of feral dogs – but still no narrative as the purpose for this action is hard to grasp. The car circles like the animals in the circus ring in another film, with a similar lack of visible motive.   The looped films extend this circling of time indefinitely. In the smaller gallery the film depicts a circus including performing animals. The timeless nature of the richly coloured costumes and the fact that such entertainment is now outlawed in many countries gives the film an archaic feel, whilst the staging in some cases looks futuristic, placing the film, which is both beautiful and deeply melancholic, in an indeterminate time zone.

The works are all filmed on super 8 film, which renders the time of their capture uncertain. Archaic in feel, they also sometimes seem contemporaneous so the events depicted cannot be pinned down to a particular time – they seem to inhabit a different type of time, not present or past but somehow parallel to our own time. Film also inevitably instils a degree of fragility and melancholy due to the indexical nature of the photographic medium, the fact that that moment cannot be captured again. The visibly moving grain in the image also offers a particular texture and a kind of internal animation which emphasises the fact that these are still frames animated, highlighting the chronicling of instances of time which unites the works.

A new text has also been commissioned from Denise Robinson to accompany the exhibition (available to download below).

Denise Robinson is an independent curator and writer and previously Head of Artistic Programme at Arnolfini and Visiting Fellow for Historical and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College and Visiting Fellow at Tate Britain. Denise curated the Cyprus Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2007.