Nell Catchpole
Selected Works / Processes
Please listen with headphones in full screen mode
Teesmouth
BBC Radio 3
& Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art
“People Powered” Exhibition, 2023
This sound piece for BBC Radio 3 and subsequent video explores the Tees estuary - it's living beings and geography - and highlights the current mass marine die-offs, most likely caused by deep dredging to build a new ‘Freeport’. In situ audio recordings with incidental interviews and live sound improvisation using materials found in place.
Holdings, Field Trip & Gongs of Teesside
Documentation of process, 2023
Holdings documents my VARC (Visual Arts in Rural Communities) residency, I stayed within walking distance of the residence, but took the same stone with me throughout the week: it became a ‘ritual object’ as I/the stone explored its different affordances across different sites in the landscape.
For the Field Trip for MIMA, I returned to the places I had recorded Teesmouth, retracing the original process with members of the public who used ‘mini zoom’ recorders to make their own sonic responses. I invited them to record their spoken reflections. The event was published in MIMAZINA along with an accessible ecological listening process.
For the first stage of Gongs of Teesside, (UKRI-funded), I am developing a collaboration with blacksmith, Peat Oberon. The video briefly documents the first test session where he forged a small gong out of mild steel, from a disc cut at a nearby steel cutters.
Filming in Field Trip and Gong Test by Rachel Deakin
Sonic Allotments
Sonic Arts Week, 2021
Over a sixth month period, I developed processes with 5 different local communities in Tees Valley, each involving field recording that documented the group’s relationship with the land. Each process resulted in a sound piece that responded to the specific group of people. the place and its ecology. These pieces were shared on accessible headphones in Centre Square in Middlesbrough throughout the festival. I created a participatory website for the project, which was also featured in MIMAZINA.
The groups were: The Men’s Shed; Barefoot Kitchen Orchard; Cultivate Tees Valley/Bowesfield Primary School; George Dura (Roma musician); Nicole Jackson (yoga teacher).
The Orchard with Barefoot Kitchen, Middlesbrough
Bowesfield Primary School with Cultivate Tees Valley, Stockton
Men’s Shed with Groundwork, Middlesbrough
Sonic Allotments was shared at Sonic Arts Week Festival in Centre Square, Middlesbrough; through a website and in MIMAZINA
Nicole Jackson at Tees River mouth
