CLUSTER

CLUSTER is a collaboration between artists Naomi Frears, Alice Mahoney and artist-musician SJ Blackmore, produced and made at CMR for Flamm 2023.

The work explores the relationship between repetition and change. Combining established and unconventional cyclical markers around Redruth – from the regular pulse of the clocktower every 15 min to the weekly bin lorry – sound, video, and sculpture will interact to shape a new portrait of the town through its rhythms.

Using solenoids to reveal and activate sound electronically, we have collected a range of notes and tones - a new and curious scale - stimulated by no longer silent sculptural objects. This unique modular ensemble combining found and made sculptural objects and the sounds they generate are in conversation with moving image. The soundscape of the 15 minute work moves from restrained and rhythmic to rich and harmonic. There will be small shifts to the work throughout the day.

The film was made by Naomi Frears – during and after her residency at CMR this summer, filmed looking out or down from the vantage point of the top floor of the building or, as the sculptural objects were being set up – inside the space. 

The sculptures are made by Alice Mahoney combined with found objects from Redruth. The objects take on a life of their own. They talk to the film and weave themselves into the soundscape changing the atmosphere as they tap, beat and oscillate excitedly on the table.

The sound, by SJ Blackmore interacts with the objects and reacts to the film creating an immersive space.

All these elements in combination create an inside out experience of the town - an alternative, parallel version of the place we know.

This is a CLUSTER of artists, practices, objects, sounds and images made in Redruth.

About the artists:

SJ Blackmore is an artist, musician and producer based in Redruth writing songs and pieces that explore human struggles, through guitar, electronic music, drawing and print.

He recently performed at a Late Tate with Disco Rococo as part of Ad Minoliti’s Biosphere Plush.

He created Cling Clack production studio in the heart of Redruth, where he produces and collaborates with other creatives, organisations and artists helping them achieve their creative vision.
Recently he has run workshops for the Newlyn & the Exchange Art Gallery and for Auction House & CAST, as part of Mark Lecky’s Music & Video lab.

Naomi Frears is based in the Porthmeor Studios in St Ives. Her practice includes work with film and video, as well as printmaking, painting, and collaborative curatorial projects.

This year she has made T-shirts, beermats and posters for exhibitions as well as her first bronze (a trophy for the worm-charming championships). Recent solo shows and commissions include Somebody Loves Us All, Bold Tendencies, Peckham and Men Falling and In Other Words, Phoenix Gallery and RAMM Exeter.

Her work appears regularly on the cover of the London Review of Books and is held in public and private collections including The Government Art Collection. She was nominated for the ‘Jarman Award’ this year.

Alice Mahoney is a multidisciplinary artist using sculpture, painting, print, film and sound to explore forms, colour, material, and surface, interrogating the relationships between things, exploring space both architecturally and topographically and the interconnectedness of objects, people and places to create fragmented narratives both real and fictional.

Having come from an art conservation background, Alice is interested in disrupting ideas around correct methodologies and material processes and enjoys using unconventional and experimental materials, re-using waste or by-products, questioning ideas around value and permanence within objects and places.

Alice works as a facilitator with both neurodivergent & neurotypical artists, including facilitating a BBC commission in 2020 and most recently working as an artist-educator on The Newlyn & the Exchange Gallery’s two year Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Teacher Development Funded project to deliver Think, Talk, Make Art, an ambitious programme of professional development and learning for primary school teachers, helping them to harness the full potential of art across their curriculum.