ANTHEM
A new audio work by William Furlong
A framework of wires, with speakers attached, will be stretched across the North and South walls of the gallery.
The sound heard over the speakers will all be recorded locally, exploring issues around the character, identity, use of the Pavilion and the atmosphere of the area around the Pavilion and seafront. The work would address the universal as well as the local in terms of people’s attitudes, ideas about the local environment, about change and the past, present and future, from personal perspectives.
Children, teenagers, couples, middle age and the elderly will be recorded and will involve tourists, visitors, holiday makers, people just passing through, those who work locally and people from abroad. The ambience of the local environment will also be part of the work with the sounds of children playing on the beach, the sea and sea gulls. The work will ‘map’ the preoccupations, thoughts and attitudes of those who visit Bexhill and the De La Warr Pavilion.
Anthem acknowledges and celebrates the De La Warr Pavilion, as a unique modernist and monumental building, its associations and activities on the South Coast of England.
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BBC News
‘Wall of sound’ hits Bexhill – review of Anthem
Click here to hear the review
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Biography
William Furlong (b. 1944 -) is recognised as belonging to a generation of British artists who developed a new concept of sculpture in the 1970s and 80s. Over the past 35 years his Audio Arts magazine has been published as a series of cassette editions (now on CD) and is a comprehensive archive of artists and interviews and important document of visual art festivals, and exhibitions. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including a sound installation in Intelligence, New British Art 2000 at Tate Britain and a solo show at the South London Gallery To Hear yourself as Others Hear You (2002). In 2007 the Audio Arts archive was exhibited at Tate Britain and his commission Walls of Sound for Goodwood Sculpture Park was acquired for the Berado Museum, Lisbon.He currently has a solo exhibition Possibility & Impossibility in Fixing Meaning at Laure Genillard, London.
Anthem is commissioned by the De La Warr Pavilion
Click here to download the Gallery Guide for this season. William Furlong’s commentary begins on page 7.
Installation Images: by Nigel Green