The work for Insito was a durational installation made in situ at the Lanificio Conte, Schio in Italy. It was a collaboration with sound artist Maryanne Royle.
Insito was a group show with artists Marta Martino, Anne Grebby, Emma Critchley, which drew inspiration from the Latin insitus, meaning “rooted within”, to explore the intrinsic connection between human beings and their surrounding environment. In this context, the works become a medium of interconnection, offering new perspectives on how we perceive and interact with the surrounding world.
Arteria. Lanificio Conte, Schio, Italy
Lanificio Conte is a large converted Mill, originally used for the manufacture of textiles in the 19th Century. The work was positioned on a mezzanine floor facing the roggia above the river which once powered the machinery for the factory. At one end of the space, a window in the floor exposes the water below, revealing the force of its flow, serving as a testament to the essential importance of the river and to the development of the textile industry around which it was founded.
‘The installation is a floor based piece made from wet clay. Over a period of days before and during the exhibition I created a texture using my feet as a kind of performative sculpture that responds to, and pays tribute to, the movement of the water, as well as to the legacy of the repetitive movement of the factory workers and to the rhythms of their spinning and weaving machinery.
My movements will mirror the way in which the water behaves within the confines of the architecturally constraining channels – carefully observed patterns that are uniquely determined by way in which the water is directed and corralled; eddies, ripples and reflected rhythms.
These observations have been informed by studying similar canals around the environment in which I live in Greater Manchester where the industrial heritage of the textiles industry once dominated the area, and to a large extent determined the construction of the towns as well as the population who inhabit it. It is still strongly in evidence today. The installation was accompanied by sound produced for this exhibition in collaboration with sound artist Maryanne Royle whose work also responds to the industrial heritage of the textiles industry.
My work is a reflection on the architecture, heritage and people who contributed to that textiles industry and is therefore a reflection on the parallel environment in Schio.
Alongside the relief sculpture I exhibited a large drawing which had been made in a similar way using my feet, water and graphite powder.’
Materials: wet clay, graphite powder, water.
Maryanne Royle
Maryanne Royle is an artist from Rochdale, Greater Manchester interested in perception and the idea of the body as a landscape. Working site specifically and with time-based media, Maryanne creates immersive and poetic experiences relevant to the heritage and character of places.
For this new collaboration with Kara, Maryanne Royle was drawing on the connection of industry between Schio and Manchester. She collected field recordings and recordings from Kara Lyons’ interactions with wet clay to create a sound piece.
Once collected, the speed and pitch of the sounds were affected and made to sound unreal. Machinery can sound bodily; voices can sound like a babbling river. Playing with time and place.
Materials: sound played on two small speakers connected with wires to an amplifier.
