Press Information
The Whisper Heard is Imogen Stidworthy’s first exhibition at Matt’s Gallery. This sculptural installation using video and sound, centres on the spoken word in relation to different notions of meaning and communication. Sounds and images are configured into three acoustic zones in the gallery, focused and reflected within the adapted architecture by loudspeakers and a parabolic dish.

The artist has been working closely with two people that deal with language in very different ways. Tony O’Donnell has aphasia, a condition following a stroke that affects the language faculty of the brain. Severin Domela, aged three, is in the process of learning to speak. As neither participant is able to read, their relationship with words is primarily oral.

In The Whisper Heard, the participants respond to a narration of chapter twenty-eight of Jules Vernes’ nineteenth-century novel ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’. Here, the main character awakens from unconsciousness having lost his companions in a maze of underground tunnels. Alone in silence and darkness, he rapidly loses all sense of relation to the outside world and his trust in his senses. Eventually, the faint echo of his uncle’s voice restores his sense of orientation and light. He sets off in the direction of the sound but falls down a hole, and is again knocked unconscious.

When listening to the tale, Tony voices his thoughts as he searches to locate meaning for the words he hears. He grasps the ideas of the narrative in mental images, but not the individual semantic expression. For him, bringing these ideas back into language means finding words again in an elliptical process of searching and translation. Severin repeats what he hears, engaging when he can with linguistic meaning and when he cannot, focusing on acoustic qualities of sound and shape. He, like Tony, speaks ‘a narration which is never allowed to reach its destination’. In The Whisper Heard, the affirming power of the narrative is diverted as language is brought into a realm of uncertainty. The spoken word is dismembered; sound, image and linguistic meaning are pulled apart. As the participants work through the text, a new form of grammar comes into operation through the grain of the voice and visual gestures: hands making images, and words and voices making shapes.

This exhibition has been generously supported by Arts Council England and The Henry Moore Foundation, and received sponsorship-in-kind from SOUNDTUBE Entertainment. For further information and visual material please contact the gallery.

Biography
Born 1963, British. Lives and works in Liverpool Studied 1992–94 Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, NL (Postgraduate Studies in Fine Art) and 1984–87 West Surrey College of Art and Design, UK (BA Hons fine art, first class) Solo Exhibitions 2006 Get Here, Galerie Hohelohe, Vienna 2005 Imogen Stidworthy, FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon; Audio Cab, temporary public art work installed in taxi cabs in Luton, UK 2003 The Whisper Heard, Matt’s Gallery, London 2002 Dummy, Netherlands Film Museum, Amsterdam; Substitutes, Gallery K&S, Berlin; o.T., Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany 2000 closing/close by, Spacex Gallery, Exeter 1998 Filmblik, Haags Filmhuis, Den Haag, NL 1997 To, Hedah, Maastricht, NL 1996 Elocution, De Vaalseberg, Rotterdam, NL 1995 Clitic, Plateau, Brussels 1991 Transparent Thing, Cambridge Darkroom Gallery, Cambridge Selected Group Exhibitions 2007 documenta 12, Kassel; LOOP Art Fair, Barcelona, Spain; Thessaloniki Bienniale; Vienna Art Fair 2006 Walk On, Shanghai Bienniale; Spool, Het Consortium, Amsterdam, NL; Rogue Wave, FACT, Liverpool, UK; 36 Seconds, BBC Big Screen, Liverpool, UK 2005 7AM, Frieze Art Fair: Artists Cinema, touring UK cinemas Jan-March; SENEF, 6th Seoul Net and Film Festival, Korea; Be What You Want but Stay Where You Are, Witte de With, Rotterdam, NL; Dutch - non Dutch, Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, NL; murmur, TENT centre for contemporary art, Rotterdam 2004 How do we Want to be Governed, Art Central, Miami; Shrinking Cities, Kunst-Werke, Berlin; Becks Futures, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow; With Hidden Noise, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds; Versions, Kunsthal Bergen, Norway 2003 Lux Open, Royal College of Art, London; Programme of 16mm short films, LUX, London 2002 ALEX, Galerie Jan Mot/Argos, Brussels; The Pleasure of Language, Netherlands Institute for New Media, Amsterdam; Say Hello, Wave Goodbye, Gallery Hohenlohe & Kalb, Vienna; Commitment, Las Palmas, Rotterdam 2001 Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement, St Gervais, Geneva; Power and the Subject, The Central House of Artists, Moscow; Exploding Cinema, Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, NL 2000 Desperate Optimists, Festival aan de Werf, Utrecht, NL; closing/close by, Video Positive, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool 1999 Searchlight; Consciousness at the Millenium, CCAC, San Francisco; Verbindingen/Jonctions, Fondation pour l’Architecture, Brussels; Fantasy Jacoba IV, Kote Kanal, Brussels; and... and... and..., Het Consortium, Amsterdam 1998 Adventurers, Cartographers, Storytellers, Fundacio la Caixa, Barcelona; Nexus, Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria; 52nd Edinburgh Film Festival, Scotland; Biennale de l’Image, Centre Nationale de la Photographie, Paris 1997 To, as part of World Wide Video Festival, Stedelijk Bureau Amsterdam; Fenêtre sur cour, Galerie Almine Rech, Paris; Prix de Rome Exhibition, Netherlands Photo Institute, Rotterdam 1996 Up Close and Personal, Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art, USA; New York Video Festival, Lincoln Centre, New York; Foriegn Bodies, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel, Switzerland; Erasa una vez... Del Minimum al Caberet, Teatro Central, Seville, Spain 1995 Auto Reverse, Saint Gervais, Geneva; International Video Festival, Reina Sophia, Madrid; Points de Vue, Images d’Europe, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels; MUKHA, Antwerp 1994 Achteinhalb (Eight and a Half), Raum Aktueller Kunst, Vienna; Steierischer Herbstes, Graz, Austria; Monolith, Lettered Rock, Witte de With, Rotterdam Collections Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon Awards Becks Futures 2004; Prix de Rome 1996, The Netherlands Residencies 2001-2002 Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany Commissions 2000-2002 Public commission for a permanent video installation at the new regional administration building, Steiermark, Murau, Austria. Architect: Wolfgang Tschapeller,Vienna