‘Test Space,’ Arts Centre Penryn, May 2025
I begin with the idea of an anchor
An anchor for this work takes many forms…as the organ…as sound…through people…textile….yarn…and movement
The organ called immediately, a beautiful touchstone, the heart of the church. A tool to unify worshippers to ‘sing all…sing lustily’ as John Wesley wrote in 1761’s ‘Directions for Singing’1
How could I use this instrument, work with the pipes, the pedals, the structure, the history, the music that stretched, filled out this space and lead so many in song
I delved into the construction and functioning of an organ, spoke to my mother, a pianist, a teacher, of how the choreography of the hands and feet occupy and perform this energetic presence in this room
I pictured it bound, yarn weaving and threading through pipes, detailing notes, octaves, rhythms, music, the focus of the piece… the organ alone
I visited Truro Cathedral…listened to the organ…listened to the choir
What moved me was not the sound expelled through air and metal pipes
But the air from the diaphragm, the ribcage, a body
The individual voice that anchors the space
Sound and Affect
Affect and Sound
My body was affected by that lone voice
It brings me back to the organ
Not the beauty in its visage, the gold painted pipes
I travel around, following its wooden shell towards the window, to E.D
E.D of 1922…1923…1924
So inscribed, a document of a person, the individual of many individuals who were a part of this chapel, this community
And here we are a hundred years later, a community
A community of artists, of students, of a town with an arts centre dedicated to its community- it’s weekly classes now residing in its new School Rooms, where artists now occupy their new studios, the newness, the space for potential…. Exhibits for ‘Women of Cornwall’ ….for ‘Test Space’
A meeting for us as MA students, after ‘Manifesto’ to develop and trial new ideas
The majesty and grandness of this space is enlivened by those that engage with it
Sound now becomes Voice
The voices that were here
The voices that are here
The voices that will be here
In the words of Salome Voegelin ‘I hand my body to it’s force’2
…How could I find a visual language to represent these voices?
These voices from history, that sang and celebrated together, that travelled through this space
The voices that bounced around whilst we sat in the pews, walked these aisles, navigated those steps
What of the building’s voice, that reached and reaches out to the houses… the people… the land around it
There is a dynamic presence that occupies this space
It does not sit stationary by the organ- there is an explosion
The Yarn is this explosion
It’s colours speaking to the stained glass, the painted pipes
Reaching out to the pews where all had a sight line
All a part of this collective
Us now are the collective, all with roles to produce this exhibition, I in conversation with Curators, Marketing and ACP….our works calling to each other…
The yarn visibly connecting and in dialogue with the works in the space.
Amber, her yarn…the jumpers, stories of community, of fishing, their patterns a knitted connection to their homes… and washing line poles reaching out to the pews….their domesticity speaking to the curtain hoops attached to the organ….linking the yarn….stretching as a canopy across the space
The yarn and it’s shape in dialogue with the ribbons of Sarah’s, joined to the plaits binding the organ columns….These plaits, my own style under a cap walking and running through Penryn mirrored by those in Sunday best sitting in the pews…their metallic hue speaking to the copper of Vicky’s… the wool never completely still communicating to the slight movement of Dan’s photography
The yarn hovering above fishing wire…textiles…painting…sculpture…interacting and becoming vitalised by the space, objects and people within it
Thomas Fuchs speaks of the body’s experience as ‘an invisible network which relates us to things and to people’3
The yarn is this network, but it does not live in isolation. It is a connection to a past, a present and a future, it has a vitality
It has a resonance and capacity to be affected and be vitalised by it’s presence here.
It’s colours wrapped around cones sits at the feet, by the pedals of the organ
Cooking….being energised by this chapel
The loudness, the public facing, the outward space is here
Where voices, and thoughts and hands interacted, and interact
Where bodies meet and walk
The very movement of installation, the pacing back and forth…To sit and study and imagine how these lines could sit in this space…A far reach from a clothing rail in the studio, short strands connected to stools, to looms, to books
The Choreography of the Make
The yarn is knotted onto a loop…a pew it’s destination
The cone drops in front of the organ…reclaimed by walking via steps and doors to the right and left…
The cone placed on top of my index finger….the other hand feeding the wool, as I walk further and further
My footsteps echoing as I walk around the balcony…then sit and attach… wool stretched and tied to the handles at the end of each pew…once for hat, gloves, books and papers
I’m sitting where other feet and bodies have tread
I’m interacting with the pews where others have sat
My echo, speaks to their echoes, a cacophony of bodily presence
There was concern that I was limiting my practice….but this material has a presence…how it feels on my fingers, how it helps me embody and connect with the space
How like Chiharu Shiota4 and Shane Waltener5 I am bringing expression and new meaning to an environment
This canopy of yarn is how I imagined…but it is the two enclaves, the companions sitting either side of the organ that has spoken to me the most
These are spaces of contemplation
The yarn reaching out towards the windows, to bedrooms, to homes, to the people
The lightbulbs, the chair in the window, the human interaction, the quietness in this space
It is a space of reflection, the softness of the colours, interplaying with the light, the curve of the windows, a cocoon
I feel a quietness here, a place to be more inward, to listen
As I move forward…forward towards the Final Show and beyond, it is the quietness of these two enclaves… the intimacy that speaks to me.
The closeness and immediacy of this yarn, brings you closer to your own body, how your body is embodying the space…encouraging you to see your environment from a different perspective
This piece is called Dialogue Between Body, Object, Space
On Elgar’s Concerto, the cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason writes ‘It is never fixed in me…a restless, churning, growing thing’6
And this is how I feel in space….there’s forever a shifting current that is always present
A current greeting me each time I’ve entered the chapel
Zoë Catherine Art 