The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

31 October 2012 – 11 November 2012 at Heath Street Baptist Church

The Long Cloud of Witnesses brings together five artists and collectives working in various media to explore different facets of the history of the Heath Street Baptist Church. Each artist responded to the invitation to make a wholly new work using the space and its histories as a starting point. The resulting works examine the architecture, the congregation and the church’s brushes with the infamous and the tragic. While the scope is specific to one church and one community the exhibition begs the question as to what hidden stories are contained in the memory of the countless buildings we rush by in our daily lives.

Paul Drummond Ashamed of your Strictures is a photomontage study (in the style of Kenneth Haliwell) for an unrealised theatrical production of an unwritten play The Pansy. The audience/jury members were borrowed from Islington Library books (Essex Road) revisited 9th August 2012. The piece is based upon the correspondence (November 1958) of Joe Orton’s (playwright and 1960’s icon) alter ego Edna Welthorpe to Rev.G.W Sterry at the Heath Street Baptist Church.

Piper Mavis was struck by the absence of the great congregation that met during the church’s heyday. In Fade Away and Radiate sisal twine emanates from the original pulpit outward and upward until it reaches every seat in the pews, once again filling the church to capacity many times over. The piece suggests at once a telephone pole with its radiating wires of conversation, the threads of fate in Greek mythology and the radiant lines in halos across many traditions. For Souvenir the North staircase to the upper balcony has been dusted for fingerprints revealing the missing overflow congregation and the clues to their presence left behind.

In the church’s Victorian former school hall Sophie Lascelles has used vintage magic lantern slides, 35mm slides, mirrors and mixed media forms to explore the compelling history of the church’s missionary legacy with the Congo. Lascelles used the biography of Heath Street missionary Dr Sidney Webb, his fevered death bed visions and the subsequent visit to Heath Street of Nlvembe –one of Webb’s Congolese converts to inform this incredible encounter between two disparate and distinct cultures, countries and traditions.

Michaela Nettell – Star charts, black and white photographs of the church ceiling are printed in negative to resemble star charts. The grid of exposed rafters map out the ‘aerial’ space; suspended glass lanterns – as well as pinpoints of natural light entering the room from small stained-glass windows – create constellatory patterns.

Presented on the west-facing balcony wall as a collection of study notes or plans, the work explores the architecture of the space – the tendency of ecclesiastical design to lead the eye upwards – as well as relationships between scientific and theistic cosmologies.

Oscillatorial Binnage Variations for Rooms and a Tone is an installation performance making audible the resonant frequencies of a space. The unique sonic fingerprint of a space is slowly revealed through the use of controlled strands of feedback. As the acoustic feedback tones vie against each other for priority, the chord mutates. Destabilising sonic material is introduced into the space whenever a too-powerful tone takes undue prominence. The space is energised further with oscillator tones harmonically tuned to the spacial resonances. The introduction of these tuned tones destabilises the feedback; enrichments of tone resound, dense modulations are created, sound peaks are formed in specific areas and the unique voice of the architecture can be coaxed toward complex flourishes. Each performance is unique, as the resonant properties of a building are never identical. Variations for Rooms and Tone #3 will be performed live at the private view and recorded for later broadcast on Resonance FM. There will also be a new sound piece within the baptistery for the duration of the exhibition.

Paul Drummond: Lives, writes and assembles collections in London. He studied Theatre Design at Wimbledon School of Art. Exhibitions include: Consumerist Theatre of Desire #1 & #2 as co-curator & exhibitor. Works as an author include: Eye Mind, an Artaudian case study of the 13th Floor Elevators and Sign of the Three Eyed Men (book with 10 CDs).

Sophie Lascelles grew up travelling the world with Footsbarn Travelling Theatre. Inspired by the many cultures and influences she encountered along the way, her work encompasses many aspects of the visual and performing art world. Sophie’s work as a visual artist focuses on 16mm film projection and site specific installation. She is represented by Danielle Arnaud contemporary art and has exhibited extensively across the UK, with commissions from Harewood House, Tatton Park Biennial and the Tate Gallery. She was a winner of the Jerwood Contemporary Painters prize in 2008. In 2010 she co directed the feature documentary Anda Union – From the Steppes to the City which is currently at film festivals internationally.

Piper Mavis is an artist and curator originally from Los Angeles now living and working in London. She earned her BA from Bennington College in the United States and her MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in the United Kingdom. Her work explores the themes of loss, nostalgia, memory and personal histories. She has exhibited internationally.

Born in 1981, Michaela Nettell graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2007. She has exhibited in galleries throughout Europe and the US including: The Tank (New York); Kunstzentrum Z33 (Hasselt, Belgium); Gimpel Fils (London) and MyOwnGallery (Milan). International festival screenings include: Videomedeja (Novi Sad, Serbia); Optica (Córdoba/Paris/Buenos Aires), Athens Video Art Festival, http://700.is/ (Egilsstadir, Iceland); and Videoformes (Clermont-Ferrand, France). She lives and works in London.
Formed in 2005, Oscillatorial Binnage is a multimedia electroacoustic group with a neo-primitivistic approach. They work with new instruments, video projection, biofeedback, post-electronic acoustic devices, alternative tunings and destabilised equipment responsive to touch.

Oscillatorial Binnage have performed concerts and installations at the Wellcome Trust, Tate Modern, the Plymouth Expo, (organised by the Sonic Arts Network) and have supported artists such as Fred Frith and Jem Finer. They have been featured in The Wire and the Leonardo Music Journal. The prolific author John Michell has been quoted as remarking “if Doctor John Dee had made musique concrète, it would probably have sounded like the Binnage”.
31 October –11 November
Open Wednesday –Sunday 1-6pm (Private View: 31 October 6-9pm)
Heath Street Baptist Church, 84 Heath Street, Hampstead, London NW3 1DN, +44 (0)7846 542873
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The Long Cloud of Witnesses Exhibition