Sue McLachlan

BA Visual Art 2006, Winchester School of Art, University of Southhampton
Specialising in installation, video and sound
MA Fine Art by project 2006-8, Winchester School of Art, University of Southhampton
Research question: Where are we in relation to sound

Key influence: Narratives from Milligan and McGee’s Sight Unseen and John Hull’s Touching the Rock and first hand experience of a totally blind couple have inspired me to contrast these experiences of displacement from outside expectations and the notion of experiencing spaces we can't see to my own perception of displacement and blockage.

Statement

Having recently completed an MA Fine Art by project at Winchester School of Art I am very pleased to have been asked by Lloyd Gill to exhibit some of my work here at The Lloyd Gill Gallery. My work deals with concepts developed from the frustration and restriction of my own broken and blocked communication to enquiries into the communication of the blind inner experience perceiving space if relying predominantly on sound. Knowing or not knowing, dependant on what type of experience.

‘knowing, not knowing’ a mixed media installation, which I recently exhibited at the MA Degree Show at Winchester School of Art, is about an internal space, the spaces we can’t see and displacement from the difficulties of gaining knowledge through sound. This sight specific work I have not been able to re create within the Lloyd Gallery due to time limitations and of course it would then take on quite a different experience, a new piece of work. I am very pleased to be given the opportunity to show my documentation and methods which inspired the installation ‘knowing not knowing’ and look forward to being able to create a sight specific piece of work for the Lloyd Gill Gallery in the furture.

Narratives from Milligan and McGee’s Sight Unseen and John Hull’s Touching the Rock and first hand experience of a totally blind couple have inspired me to contrast these experiences of displacement from outside expectations and the notion of experiencing spaces we can't see to my own perception of displacement and blockage. Displacement is about an embodied experience, I had wanted to encompass experiences of being taken somewhere else by not being able to see what you can hear, hearing something you don’t understand, uncertainty, frustration and not knowing.

My methods have been to draw my own experiences of displacement and how ephemeral tapestries of sound arrest us. I used two drawings in particular, Untitled I and Untitled III, to create ‘knowing not knowing’. Also important to the method has been the right space to initiate development and change in relation to the contrast of internal and external. I particularly chose a space with corridors and internal and external aspects, utilised and responded to this specific site in relation to an inner site.

I was also influenced by the film ‘Innocence’ by Lucile Hadzihalilovic with her strange and arresting visual experience of displacement and Louise Bourgeois’s methodologies and approach to the use of experiences in connection to the anthropomorphic qualities of architectural space, but also contrasting materials. This has influenced my practice from how I work from drawings of experience to the materials I contrast.

Using materials not usual to a gallery or art school, but which make you think of another space beyond are represented in the video on the white monitor and sounds. I chose to use mezzanine grids to prevent access, negate visuals and their heavy, weighty appearance gave a feeling of an internal and blocked experience. I misplaced these materials to give a visual displacement and started with a drawing on the floor (my interpretation of sound, its inner starting point to its blockage and the need to penetrate as does sound arrest me constantly and can do for the blind also). The sounds displace by confusing and make us aware of an internal space. Both sound and visual experiences are completely out of character within a white walled space.

Here at the Lloyd Gill Gallery you are experiencing the documentation of the installation. The drawings, sounds and video (TV monitor on the floor) of my experiences and that of those I have been interested in through sound in response to the architecture of a space.

My work has concentrated on a realm of experience and has been likened to Tatlin’s Tower, ‘a gesture in faith of something better’ and this improvisation of placing and replacing their position is like a jazz performance, not knowing what the result will be. The not knowing and the unexpected moments of experience have always been part of the work. This scary but exciting prospect is the concept and the practice.

From a crazy starting point, in my original MA proposal, where are we in relation to sound? and wanting to make a difference to others, I have not been beholden entirely to this and let the research take its own course in the knowledge that this exciting process will continue.

Professional Experience
1990-93 Admin Asst to Technical Director, Theatre Royal,
Plymouth
1993-99 Admin Asst, Solent Peoples Theatre, Southampton
2002-04 Display Coordinator, Hiltingbury Jnr School, Eastleigh
2002-07 Research Admin Asst., University of Winchester
Exhibition Record
2005 Diploma Show,Winchester School of Art,
University of Southampton
Video, Moments
2005Small Works Show, Winchester School of Art,
University of Southampton
Sound installation,Sound Works
2006 Degree Show, Winchester School of Art,
University of Southampton
Sound Installation,Sound Phenomena
2008 MAIntrim Show,Winchester School of Art
Untitled, Installation