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A Rural Idyll
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@hortus_silvam
Dialogue with my Father
‘To pay homage to my father who was a composer, writer and teacher. This is an overdue series - a response to my father’s lack of expectations for me to become a musician. A Goldsmith’s educated composer, he brought me up to listen with deep attention and duration. Designated Literary Executor weighs an enormous sense of responsibility for the artistic career of another. Through his manuscripts and writing and the familial piano on which he composed, this project creates a space to converse with my father.’
colour HD video 7’20” with
stereo sound composition, 2022-2025
Location: Suffolk
Location: Suffolk
What if you just cannot allow yourself to let go of something, because it reminds you so profoundly of the person who has gone? What if this holding on to the past has become self destructive, to the point where objects are taking over?
The artist pushes the heavy bulk of this domestic, upright piano around on the concrete floor trying and failing to find it space in the room. Frustration strips the piano of its dignity. Braced, it fights back stoically, belligerent, vibrating a dance to its raucous rumbling, dainty wheels twist in agony under its defiant weight, before taking you on a mesmerising journey inside the piano accompanied by a composition that gives voice to its involuntary creeks and resonances.
2025 screened as part of Dialogues by Sophie Standford (UK)
DIVFUSE Film Archive No.1 with a theme on domesticity.
The artist pushes the heavy bulk of this domestic, upright piano around on the concrete floor trying and failing to find it space in the room. Frustration strips the piano of its dignity. Braced, it fights back stoically, belligerent, vibrating a dance to its raucous rumbling, dainty wheels twist in agony under its defiant weight, before taking you on a mesmerising journey inside the piano accompanied by a composition that gives voice to its involuntary creeks and resonances.
2025 screened as part of Dialogues by Sophie Standford (UK)
DIVFUSE Film Archive No.1 with a theme on domesticity.
Dialogue with my Father: Piano
Performance
colour HD video 8’00” with stereo sound, 2023
Location: Suffolk
colour HD video 8’00” with stereo sound, 2023
Location: Suffolk
Piano documents a performed act: I push the heavy weight of this upright instrument around on the concrete floor trying and failing to find it space in the room, to physical exhaustion.
Dialogue with my Father: Meno Mosso
Moving Image
colour HD video 5’20” stereo sound, 2019
Location: Suffolk
colour HD video 5’20” stereo sound, 2019
Location: Suffolk
Meno Mosso is a short contemplative video work in which I gather ideas of contemplation regarding my father’s piano for the first time after his death. The title comes from his Cello Concerto manuscript score, written the year I was born, entrusted to me as literary executor, handwritten on tracing paper in preparation for print.
Dialogue with my Father:
the archive (collage on paper)
the archive (collage on paper)
The extraordinary responsibility of sorting and caring for the archive of another artist; the proximity to their presence through handwritten manuscripts and notes; regret for the unspoken dialogues. An ongoing palimpsest of works on paper still bearing visible traces of the original hand.
Collage Series, 21x30cm
Archive handwritten music manuscripts and printed notes belonging to my father, graphite, ink, gouache, photographs, paper 2020-2024
Archive handwritten music manuscripts and printed notes belonging to my father, graphite, ink, gouache, photographs, paper 2020-2024