The ambitious work emerged from a series of workshops throughout 2022 with Rotherham Sight and Sound (RSS) members Kathleen Allott, Anne Goss and Mick Gladwin, all of whom are Blind and Visually Impaired.
The darkened gallery hides a large, tactile form that is both the means and obstacle to our experience. Made out of aluminium rods, it recalls structures of support and play: handrails, walking aids and playground equipment. Visitors are invited to collectively feel their way through the environment and discover surprising correlations between touch, sound and light – what Rian calls ‘sensory discontinuities’.
This installation stems from a series of group-based sound works that the artist co-developed with his father and artist Mark Fell during Covid-19. Recombining components used in Mark’s 2022 work Systematic Peripheralism, Rian furthers this examination of participation and togetherness through the haptics of sound. By foregrounding interdependence and ‘multiplayer’ formats across (dis)abilities and media, Cumulative Entanglement with RSS insists that the wonder of artistic experimentation be a shared experience that is accessible to everyone.
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