Exhibitions

With Hidden Noise was the first exhibition to look at sculpture and video art and the ways in which both media have been animated by ventriloquism. It challenged the idea that sculpture is a silent art and presented a selection of objects, sculptures and videos that were both evocative and illustrative of voice and voice throwing.

The exhibition looked at the relationship between an object and its operator, the sculpture and its maker, the viewer and the viewed. It examined ways in which sculptors have expressed themselves through the things they have made and how sculptures have subsequently been given the power to ‘speak’. It presented works which open up a range of narratives and ventriloquist themes: from stories of collaborative making, tales of displaced responsibility, theatrical autobiographies and uncanny confessions, to video performances of political and psychological conflicts.

With Hidden Noise brought together works which play on our ability to suspend disbelief but which are also resonant of our anxieties over mimicry, illusion and literalism. It included recent examples by artists who work with video but who describe themselves as sculptors, as well as a selection of works by well-known artists, like Duchamp and Morris, which are re-interpreted with ventriloquism and voice in mind.