INTERZONE
Barry Cullen, Jonny McEwen, Una Monaghan, Saul Rayson, Susannah Stark

24 May – 5 July 2018

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Interzone brings together a group of internationally prominent and emergent artists whose approaches to their individual art practices embrace sound, installation and visual components. The project is a six week conversation, the gallery re-imagined as liminal land between borders, playing host to a sustained exploration of the multi-faceted, complex, mutually invigorating relationships possible across visual and sonic art practices and rejecting outmoded separation between disciplines within contemporary art. Codes, glitches and loops permeate the assembled constituents of the exhibition, instigating a shifting inter-connection between what is seen and heard. The title references both the International Zone setting of William S Burroughs taboo breaking 1959 novel Naked Lunch and the mysterious, dreamlike “Zone” in Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film Stalker.

Interzone will be complemented by a series of live Sonic Art performances on the opening night and to coincide with June and July Late Night Art Belfast.

Barry Joseph Cullen is an audio and video worker who has exhibited, performed and researched in Europe, the Middle East, North and South America. He is currently researching making DIY electronic instruments at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast. His practice involves working with traditional and modern tools. The work usually includes delivering DIY electronics, audio technology and motion graphics workshops, interactive AV installation works, performance (DJing, VJing and live instrumentation) and creative technical support.Performance projects use a mix of: improvisation, noise, environmental sound and play.

Born in Enniskillen in 1966, Jonny McEwen began painting in 1986 and first exhibited in 1991. A Graduate of the Art College in Belfast, he has exhibited widely in Ireland, England, Wales and Germany Including several solo shows in Belfast Dublin and Cork. McEwen’s work is part of the following public collections: UTV, Dept of Environment NI, Secretary of States Office, Dept of Finance, Office of Public Works, University of Cork; as well as many private collections.  In 2014 McEwen completed his Masters in fine Art at the University of Ulster, where his work developed to include a digital practice using Video and computer code.His new work includes painting and digital installation, with aesthetics crossing over between the digital and analogue works.

Úna Monaghan is a harper, composer, researcher and sound artist from Belfast. Her recent work has combined traditional music with bronze sculpture, sound art and movement sensors. Her compositions have been presented on BBC and RTÉ television and radio, in theatre productions, and at international festivals and conferences, such as the International Computer Music Conference, York Festival of Ideas, and New York Electroacoustic Music Festival. Úna has held artist residencies at the Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris, the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas Montréal, and the Future Music Lab at the Atlantic Music Festival, Maine, USA. Úna also works as a sound engineer specialising in Irish traditional music, and experimental, live electronic and multichannel music, a role in which she travels worldwide. Úna is the Rosamund Harding Research Fellow in Music at Newnham College, University of Cambridge. Her research examines the intersections between Irish traditional music, experimental music practices, improvisation and interactive technologies. She performs with harp and electronics, and released an album of her compositions for harp and electronics, named “For” in 2018.

Composer, improviser and percussionist Saul Rayson studied with various drum teachers including Allen Cox and Kim Plainfield at The Drummers Collective in New York. Saul’s Musical career has encompassed various musical environments and endeavours. As a sideman, he has worked with many artists and bands including Mark Van Hoen ‘Locust’ (R&S Records), Seefeel (Too Pure Records), Velocette (Wijja records) Baby Fox (Road Runner Recorders), Mike Flowers (Sony Music) and Owen Lamont ‘Hold On’.  Saul’s collaborative work includes: ARC (Allen, Rayson, Cullen), Subfusc ‘Sonic Kitchen’, and Iain McCurdy ‘Acoustic Capacitance’ (performed at Maynooth University, Csound 30 Conference 2016). Saul also performs and composes as a solo artist often under ‘Subfusc’ and other pseudonyms and played at Sonorities 2018.  Saul trained as a recording engineering at Fortress Studios in London and has worked with artists such as Lisa Millet, Ted Barns (Beth Orton, Clayhill), Tummy Touch Records and Jamaican Records. He also worked for mastering and archiving studio, Ideal Mastering. Saul has experimented with extending his sounds in both performance and recording, with computer environments, Supercollider and Pure Data. In recent years, he has been building hardware, in the form of a Eurorack systems. This exploration has involved the extension and adaptation of drums with the use of contact mics and addition of material through the drum membrane and various developments in the ways to excite the drums, using drums as both a sound and control source. During this time, his use of improvisation has impacted greatly on his composition and performance work. Saul is a lecturer at South Eastern Regional College where he teaches music performance and production.

Susannah Stark graduated from Grays School of Art in Aberdeen (2011) and Royal College of Art in London (2016) where she studied printmaking, and primarily works with music, voice, sound and print-based installation. Her work North East Wis-Dom was shown at the Third CAFAM Biennial, Negotiating Space CAFA Art Museum, Beijing, China, (2016/17), Idols and Impossible Structures, International Print Centre New York, USA (2017) and in Ambient Occlusion, Gossamer Fog, London (2017). In 2016 she collaborated with musician Donald Hayden on a commissioned surround sound audio work The Wheel for Soundscape Park at Art Basel in Miami Beach, USA. In 2017 they worked together on surround sound audio as part of exhibition Lilt, Twang, Tremor at the CCA in Glasgow (2017/18), which included a talk and live music/voice performance (January 2018). This work was then shown as a solo presentation Searchlights at bb15, Linz, Austria (2018). In 2017 she collaborated with artist Karolina Lebek on an exhibition with live music/spoken word performance Unnatural Wealth curated by A- – -Z at StudioRCA in London (2017), and with artist Suzanne Dery on an exhibition and performance The Minch at the Market Gallery, Glasgow (2017). Recent screenings include Unnatural Wealth CCA, Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art (2018), Glare curated by LUX Scotland and Gallery Celine , Glasgow Film Theatre (2018). She has recently completed residencies at Hospitalfield, Arbroath, Scotland (2017) The Fountainhead, Miami, USA (2017) and bb15, Austria (2018) and is currently working on new music for release on EP later in 2018.

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Kindly supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.