Focal Point Gallery

FPG Sounds: Adrian Lane, ‘Through Fallen Leaves’

The second commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea. For this commission, artist Adrian Lane has composed and created a series of musical instrumentations inspired by locations, sounds and textures across Southend-on-Sea, including areas such as Priory Park, Prittle Brook, East Beach and Gunners Park. Using field recordings from each location, as well as the use of strings, flutes and ambient synth music (each performed by Lane), the work attempts to evoke the emotion and essence of each environment, explored with affection by the artist over lockdown with his family.

“A field recording of walking through piles of dry leaves, and a playful flute comes in before a more sedate string quartet. I had in mind the paths through Priory Park, a relaxing walk through the fallen leaves with my children”.

Adrian Lane creates instrumental neo-classical, ambient music and abstract textural mixed media paintings. A painter by profession, Adrian often works on music and paintings simultaneously, his painting process is reflected in his musical compositions – layering, cutting, and moving parts around, until the finished result is achieved. Employing a combination of age-old instruments (alto and baritone bowed psalteries, acoustic guitar, violin, banjo, zither, glockenspiel, piano) but constructed in a way that could only be achieved with modern technology, Lane often takes influences from early music, folk, world and contemporary classical, ambient and electronica.

Find out more here: https://www.fpg.org.uk/exhibitions/adrian-lane

FPG Sounds: Adrian Lane, ‘The Old Ranges in November’

The second commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea. For this commission, artist Adrian Lane has composed and created a series of musical instrumentations inspired by locations, sounds and textures across Southend-on-Sea, including areas such as Priory Park, Prittle Brook, East Beach and Gunners Park. Using field recordings from each location, as well as the use of strings, flutes and ambient synth music (each performed by Lane), the work attempts to evoke the emotion and essence of each environment, explored with affection by the artist over lockdown with his family.

“I did a field recording at Gunner's Park and there happened to be a propeller plane flying over which made me think of the history of the area. I wanted to contrast the peaceful nature of the place now, with memories of what it was originally used for. I have a synth playing morse code, which spells out 'Old Ranges' and then a string quartet comes in”.

Adrian Lane creates instrumental neo-classical, ambient music and abstract textural mixed media paintings. A painter by profession, Adrian often works on music and paintings simultaneously, his painting process is reflected in his musical compositions – layering, cutting, and moving parts around, until the finished result is achieved. Employing a combination of age-old instruments (alto and baritone bowed psalteries, acoustic guitar, violin, banjo, zither, glockenspiel, piano) but constructed in a way that could only be achieved with modern technology, Lane often takes influences from early music, folk, world and contemporary classical, ambient and electronica.

Find out more here: https://www.fpg.org.uk/exhibitions/adrian-lane

FPG Sounds: Adrian Lane, ‘Inside the Walled Garden’

The second commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea. For this commission, artist Adrian Lane has composed and created a series of musical instrumentations inspired by locations, sounds and textures across Southend-on-Sea, including areas such as Priory Park, Prittle Brook, East Beach and Gunners Park. Using field recordings from each location, as well as the use of strings, flutes and ambient synth music (each performed by Lane), the work attempts to evoke the emotion and essence of each environment, explored with affection by the artist over lockdown with his family.

“Inspired by Priory Park's walled garden; I did a field recording in there and have it fading in and out in waves of sounds, which makes it sound a bit like waves of the sea. There was a certain serendipity when I later found out that the fish sculpted on the stones near the steps, used to be at the entrance to the pier. The main sounds are string quartet and flutes, with some subtle synths”.

Adrian Lane creates instrumental neo-classical, ambient music and abstract textural mixed media paintings. A painter by profession, Adrian often works on music and paintings simultaneously, his painting process is reflected in his musical compositions – layering, cutting, and moving parts around, until the finished result is achieved. Employing a combination of age-old instruments (alto and baritone bowed psalteries, acoustic guitar, violin, banjo, zither, glockenspiel, piano) but constructed in a way that could only be achieved with modern technology, Lane often takes influences from early music, folk, world and contemporary classical, ambient and electronica.

Find out more here: https://www.fpg.org.uk/exhibitions/adrian-lane

FPG Sounds: K-A-B, ‘Echoes in the Fossils: After the Anthropocene (Part 5)’

The final part of the project, ‘After the Anthropocene’, is a new sound composition accompanied by moving image produced using artificial intelligence visual software. Combining images of organic matter, life-forms and plastics, the image evolves to create what can be described as a futurist aquatic-polymer-human hybrid.

‘Echoes in the Fossils’ uses experimental sound to consider the impact of climate change on Southend’s coastline. Including the use of aural frequencies of melting ice, community soundscapes and ‘techno-fossils’ made from coastal waste which conduct sound when touched by a human hand. Brought together in a final composition, Buckley’s emotive project provokes a call to action with the knowledge that Southend is included in the first 10% of UK towns to be flooded by rising sea levels.

Commissioned as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, a new project led by Focal Point Gallery bringing together the works of 15 Southend artists to create a series of original sound works released online throughout 2022. Spoken word, experimental music, field recordings and podcasts will set the stage for a diverse programme that celebrates the intuitive use of sound by Southend’s artist community.

Find out more here: Echoes in the Fossils | Focal Point Gallery (fpg.org.uk)

FPG Sounds: K-A-B, ‘Echoes in the Fossils: Technofossils Playback (Part 4)’

Imagined futurist sonic remnants of the Anthropocene epoch are echoed from ‘inside’ techno fossils, used as conductive and visual aids to produce sound when touched by human hand. The techno fossils were created by K-A-B using plastics and metal waste, collected from the same local shorelines threatened by the rising sea levels.

‘Echoes in the Fossils’ uses experimental sound to consider the impact of climate change on Southend’s coastline. Including the use of aural frequencies of melting ice, community soundscapes and ‘techno-fossils’ made from coastal waste which conduct sound when touched by a human hand. Brought together in a final composition, Buckley’s emotive project provokes a call to action with the knowledge that Southend is included in the first 10% of UK towns to be flooded by rising sea levels.

Commissioned as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, a new project led by Focal Point Gallery bringing together the works of 15 Southend artists to create a series of original sound works released online throughout 2022. Spoken word, experimental music, field recordings and podcasts will set the stage for a diverse programme that celebrates the intuitive use of sound by Southend’s artist community.

Find out more here: Echoes in the Fossils | Focal Point Gallery (fpg.org.uk)

FPG Sounds: K-A-B, ‘Echoes in the Fossils: Dying Ice (Part 3)’

The mystery and depths of the rising sea, the beauty and aural frequencies produced by melting ice and the loss of communities’ soundscapes are explored through immersive audio-visual experiments using binaural, hydrophone and contact mics and midi controllers which turn conductive materials’ electricity into sound.

‘Echoes in the Fossils’ uses experimental sound to consider the impact of climate change on Southend’s coastline. Including the use of aural frequencies of melting ice, community soundscapes and ‘techno-fossils’ made from coastal waste which conduct sound when touched by a human hand. Brought together in a final composition, Buckley’s emotive project provokes a call to action with the knowledge that Southend is included in the first 10% of UK towns to be flooded by rising sea levels.

Commissioned as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, a new project led by Focal Point Gallery bringing together the works of 15 Southend artists to create a series of original sound works released online throughout 2022. Spoken word, experimental music, field recordings and podcasts will set the stage for a diverse programme that celebrates the intuitive use of sound by Southend’s artist community.

Find out more here: Echoes in the Fossils | Focal Point Gallery (fpg.org.uk)

FPG Sounds: K-A-B, ‘Echoes in the Fossils: Will We listen When It Is Too Late? (Part 2)’

Shoeburyness, Southend, Westcliff, Chalkwell, Leigh and Canvey are included in the first 10% of UK towns to be flooded by rising sea levels. This project poses the same questions asked by scientists today: ‘Can the epic disaster which submerged Doggerland happen again?’

‘Echoes in the Fossils’ uses experimental sound to consider the impact of climate change on Southend’s coastline. Including the use of aural frequencies of melting ice, community soundscapes and ‘techno-fossils’ made from coastal waste which conduct sound when touched by a human hand. Brought together in a final composition, Buckley’s emotive project provokes a call to action with the knowledge that Southend is included in the first 10% of UK towns to be flooded by rising sea levels.

Commissioned as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, a new project led by Focal Point Gallery bringing together the works of 15 Southend artists to create a series of original sound works released online throughout 2022. Spoken word, experimental music, field recordings and podcasts will set the stage for a diverse programme that celebrates the intuitive use of sound by Southend’s artist community.

Find out more here: Echoes in the Fossils | Focal Point Gallery (fpg.org.uk)

FPG Sounds: K-A-B, ‘Echoes in the Fossils: And Doggerland Fell Silent (Part 1)’

For the first track in this five-part audio-visual work, Southend-based artist K-A-B (Kelly Ann Buckley) looks at the parallels between the devastation of a rich Mesolithic landscape lost to the North Sea 8,000 years ago and the potential disasters of the current climate emergency, which looks set to significantly impact parts of the world, including Essex, by 2050.

‘Echoes in the Fossils’ uses experimental sound to consider the impact of climate change on Southend’s coastline. Including the use of aural frequencies of melting ice, community soundscapes and ‘techno-fossils’ made from coastal waste which conduct sound when touched by a human hand. Brought together in a final composition, Buckley’s emotive project provokes a call to action with the knowledge that Southend is included in the first 10% of UK towns to be flooded by rising sea levels.

Commissioned as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, a new project led by Focal Point Gallery bringing together the works of 15 Southend artists to create a series of original sound works released online throughout 2022. Spoken word, experimental music, field recordings and podcasts will set the stage for a diverse programme that celebrates the intuitive use of sound by Southend’s artist community.

Find out more here: Echoes in the Fossils | Focal Point Gallery (fpg.org.uk)

In Conversation: The Peoples Landscape: Podcast by Shaun C Badham

The People’s Landscape podcast aims to look at how the ownership of local land in South Essex has changed over the years from farmers, land speculators, plotlanders to current day. We hope to better understand the synergy between both these past communities and today’s local allotment societies and community growing projects. By tracing the demise of the plotlanders from compulsive purchasing schemes to slower encroaching commercial developments, what can this history tells us about today’s precarity around community land ownership and what the future holds for these groups who care and work the local land today. The podcast brings together current day conversations and historical accounts.

A podcast by Shaun C. Badham with Fay Armstrong, Ron Bates, Pauline Beckwith, Tilly Hogrebe, Ray How, Kamil Pachalko and Philippa Stewart. Edition by Gabriella Milanese, Realm Video.

Things You Never Got Taught...#5 Up Your Grant Game

This talk provides an overview to Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice grant and the difference to the National Lottery Project Grants. We discussed access support and provisions for neurodivergent and disabled artists. Taking place online, this session was led by Mandy Fowler, independent consultant, curator and producer in visual arts.

‘Things you never get taught…’ is a series of free development workshops for artists, arts organisations and those who want to develop their cultural offer. This series will focus on essential skills that might be overlooked by formal arts education, such as writing funding applications and developing a career as an artist.