Overview
14th - 27th April 2023
K-House, 70 Oxford Road, M1 5NH
Curated by Pink Manchester
Keeping Company
Credits
About
Keeping Company is an invitational curatorial project that seeks to explore the potential of thinking with, and through, another person. For its first iteration, Keeping Company brings together artist Alana Lake and composer Jia Lee into the space of K-house, presenting them with a collaborative site for encounter, exchange, and experimental thinking and facilitating an open-ended discursive space for physical discussion. Over a period of three weeks, this physical discussion will unfold as an evolving installation that will expand upon Lake’s interest in material’s potential to embody and interrogate lived experience.
Lake’s work is derived from an autoethnographic sculptural practice approach, reflecting personal experiences of addiction and recovery, rooted in queer phenomenology and wider intersectional discourse. The installation is accompanied by a new compositional work by Lee, encompassing fragmented sounds recorded from site-specific field recordings that place emphasis on the physical and emotional process behind the making of the sculptures, with the intention of creating a multi-dimensional perspective of Lake’s artistry while supporting her new body of works. It is an ambient exploration featuring the use of found sounds collected and recorded from within the glass workshop at Manchester School of Art, consisting of recordings from every possible situation - the sounds of the burning furnace, the shaping of the molten glass, which has been manipulated and morphed into a singular music piece. Drenched in textural and spatial subtleties, this music piece weaves together an aural tapestry of personal stories and its environmental beauty. It is an emotive work, calling for listeners to let go of their thoughts and immerse themselves in its sounds and nuances.
