Sound Work

Sounding The Stade - October 2023

Sound artists, Tullis Rennie and Ruby Colley, devised an immersive insallation in soundings taken from The Stade on walks exploring boundaries, continuity and complexity.

An open session was includded for a sensory encounter with soundscapes, testimonies and field recordings that invite a different way of connecting with the space around us.

Shown at Hastings Contemporary

Edgeland - June 2021

'Edgeland' is taken from the environmentalist Marion Shoard who coined the term, which she defined as "the interfacial interzone between urban and rural". The films focus on a particular place that I've long admired - the place where the Sea meets the industrial estates of Bulverhithe industrial estate, West St Leonards.

I’ve been interested, with our growing awareness of the climate catastrophe, how these ‘confused’ spaces are perceived. Where nature and human industrialisation sit next to each other.

For Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts, their book ‘Edgelands’ these are the great "unnamed" and "ignored" landscapes of modern England: places where "our slipstream has created a zone of inattention" in which all manner of interest and beauty thrive.

Edgeland focuses on four points of interest in and around the bulverhithe seaside walkway train depo and industrial estate. The people that live there, work there and pass through it. This is explored primarily through sound. Active listening allows us to connect to a sense of place, as well as baring witness to spaces & sounds that can be overlooked.

April 2023

Stripped Bare

An audio-visual installation featuring Yasmin Aishah and Ruby Colley began a project for the ATownExploresABook23 festival entitled Unmasked.

During the process, Yasmin Aishah suffered a devastating house fire in which her artwork for the project was destroyed. In Unmasked part 2, Yasmin’s testimony gathered before the fire is contrasted with her experience afterwards as she processes this traumatic event, recognising that all the elements in her life that she used to masked have been destroyed.

Mary Seacole travelled to England from Jamaica as a teenager. On her return journey aboard the Velusia, a fire broke out in the hold and Mary explains that although “considerably alarmed, I did not lose my senses.” Subsequently in The Great Fire of Kingston in 1843, Mary Seacole details the destruction of her own house. “As it was, I very nearly lost my life, for I would not leave my house until every chance of saving it had gone, and it was wrapped in flames. But, of course, I set to work again in a humbler way, and rebuilt my house by degrees, and restocked it, succeeding better than before;”

Unamsked

A sound installation by Ruby Colley featuring migrant and windrush community members, Les Booth, Michael Braithwaite, Paulo Lopes, Dave Rohoman and Elwaldo Romeo, who share their experiences of times in their lives when they feel able to be their authentic selves. And when and how they ‘mask’ to fit in.

Mary Seacole was born in Kingston, Jamaica, to a mother of mixed heritage.

The community featured in this festival installation project reflect Mary Seacole’s experience of being born in a place saturated in British colonial identity and subsequently settling in London and travelling the globe.

Hear My Tree - April 2021

Ruby Colley's composition was created for the A Town Explores A Book festival and honours Edward Lear’s affinity with trees and nature. It is composed of recordings of visits to Gensing Gardens, St Leonards on Sea, by the community, who selected their favourite tree to listen to and shared their recordings with Ruby and Hastings Borough Council’s tree officer, Chris Wilken, who spoke to ExploreTheArch artist Erica Smith about the trees in the park.