A solo exhibition by Anne-Marie Copestake reflecting on practice with further aspects of practice highlighted through a series of programmed public events, these included:
Thin gold chains link ears to the tip of their tongue
A programme of live sets and listening sets by Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh, Anna Clock, Neil McDermott, Francis McKee, and Anne-Marie Copestake in collaboration with Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh.
To recognise with the certainty of an ideal sibling
A screening and discussion with Anne-Marie presented in collaboration with LUX Scotland.
Inhabiting the intimacies of voice, language and the discreet materiality of our immediate world Looking in either direction the whole street was filled with people, some singing, moving towards x... is a vivid mediation on the politics of the unsung, unuttered and the tangible passion of collectivity in the everyday. Featuring the breadth and fluidity of Copestake’s oeuvre that traverses sculptures, prints, installation, moving image works, performance, text and sound, the exhibition navigates the simultaneous fragility and ‘joie de vivre’ of human communication and its necessity for a communal recognition.
An abiding character of Copestake’s practice, in all its myriad forms, is a subtle focus on the ‘soft power’ of orality and its often intense relation with the moving image. For Copestake, this approach does not mean that one voice is privileged over another, instead it is a
tactic to draw close attention to the social and political fabric of language and how a lone voice immediately calls another to recognise its presence. In this call for a response, the voice, whether as speech, text or image is always constitutive of a collective; a community in which life is not experienced in solitude, but lived ardently in the company of others.
Cooper Gallery