Bosse & Baum presents Serena Korda’s first exhibition at the gallery, Breakthrough. Four ceramic sculptures titled Resonators and the new sound piece entitled Clairaudience, have been brought together for the solo presentation. Working with ceramics and sound for several years, Korda combines her experimental approach to the materials with her interest in the acoustic properties of objects.
Commissioned by and previously exhibited at The Hepworth Wakefield in 2018, Resonators, comprise of large, richly glazed vessels with openings at each end. In the 1850s, physicist Hermann von Helmholtz developed a device, now known as the Helmholtz resonator, to pick out specific frequencies from complex sounds. Inspired by these instruments, Korda created these works which amplify certain frequencies from the sound piece in the gallery, and invite the audience to listen through them by placing their ears to each vessel to hear a range of bass-like tones.* Varying in their sizes and points of contact with the ground, each one resonates naturally at a slightly different frequency. These are hybrid objects, at once sculptures, musical instruments and pieces of scientific apparatus.
Clairaudience, takes its starting point from, the resonance of particular spaces and what they might hold through field recordings. Korda visited UFO hotspots around Todmodern in West Yorkshire, that had a history of sightings, performing deep listening in each location, in an attempt to soak up some of this alleged UFO activity.
Breakthrough suggests a desire to connect with the realm of the afterlife: Korda has been fascinated by Konstantin Raudive’s research into Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP), hearing voices from the afterlife usually on a radio tuned between stations. ‘Breakthrough’ was the title of Raduive’s book and EP published in 1971 about communication with the dead using electromagnetism and radio as his medium. Raudive was a student of Carl Jung and spent much of his life studying parapsychology and the notion of the afterlife. EVP has little to no scientific grounding and can be explained as a form of auditory illusion, suggesting that you are hearing voices within white noise. Even though a hugely discredited phenomenon it is one that allows us to consider auditory illusion and how we are effected by sound. Breakthrough suggests a scientific discovery but also a way of getting through to the “other side” combining Korda’s interest in the scientific and imaginary holding equal weight.
| Duration | 06 June 2019 - 20 July 2019 |
| Times | Wednesday – Saturday : 12pm – 6pm |
| Cost | Free |
| Venue | Bosse and Baum |
| Address | WC1V 7EY, London, SE15 3SN |
| Contact | 07946 399 916 / info@bosseandbaum.com / bosseandbaum.com |