Orchestral Manoeuvres
1 October 2021
Sound and art come together in ArtScience Museum’s exhibition, Orchestral Manoeuvres: See Sound. Feel Sound (28 August 2021 – 2 January 2022) which features 32 artists who explore sound through sculpture, installation and music.
Sound has been established as an artistic medium since the beginning of the last century. Orchestral Manoeuvres: See Sound. Feel Sound celebrates this artform through the work of some of the world’s leading artists whose explorations of the sonic landscape encourage visitors to listen more closely to the sounds around us.
Samson Young, Muted Situation #5: Muted Chorus, 2016, showing in Orchestral Manoeuvres, ArtScience Museum, 2021-2022
The show marks our tenth anniversary ArtScience Museum and is curated by my colleague, Adrian George with our curator, Amita Kirpalani and me.
The exhibition is itself a complex soundscape, an auditory and visual journey that extends the notion of what sound and music is, and how it can be experienced. The exhibition is not a quiet experience. It is not a concert. It is not a performance or any sort of recital. It is instead a form of curatorial orchestration, with different stories, voices, and historical sounds overlapping, as visitors make their way through the galleries.
Orchestral Manoeuvres features sound-art projects, early music notation, experimental scores, noise-making sculptures and video installations. One of the highlights of the exhibition is the first presentation in Southeast Asia of the landmark artwork, The Forty Part Motet (A reworking of “Spem in Alium,” by Thomas Tallis 1556), 2001 by Janet Cardiff.
Janet Cardiff, The Forty Part Motet (A reworking of “Spem in Alium,” by Thomas Tallis 1556), 2001, showing in Orchestral Manoeuvres, ArtScience Museum, 2021-2022
The colleague Adrian George noted of the exhibition:
“Most of us are swimming in an ocean of sound, most of which we tune-out or disregard. This exhibition invites visitors to listen differently, to tune into the unheard and to the neglected sounds of our world. While some artists create artworks that make sound visible, others explore sound from the perspective of its opposite: silence. Other artists expose and subvert the rules and grammar of music – how it’s written or could be written, how it is interpreted and how it might be composed or created now. Others use the human voice – the oldest means of sound-making – as a way to articulate ideas of community, society and the challenges that arise when the human voice is muted. Whatever journey you take through Orchestral Manoeuvres, music will never sound the same again.”
Installation view, Orchestral Manoeuvres, ArtScience Museum, 2021-2022
Artists and composers include Nevin Aladağ (Germany), Song-Ming Ang (Singapore), Cory Arcangel (USA), John Cage (USA), Janet Cardiff (Canada), Chen Zhen (China), Phil Collins (UK), Hsiao Sheng-Chien (Taiwan), Jeremy Deller (UK), Toshi Ichiyanagi (Japan), Idris Khan (UK), Zul Mahmod (Singapore), Robert Morris (USA), Carsten Nicolai (Germany), Hannah Perry (UK), Pauline Oliveros (USA), Yoko Ono (Japan/USA), Hannah Perry (UK), RAW Art Space (Malaysia), Luigi Russolo (Italy), Christine Sun Kim (USA), Timm Ulrichs (Germany), Gillian Wearing (UK), Peter Weibel (Germany), Samson Young (Hong Kong) and Ashley Zelinskie (USA).
Christine Sun Kim, The Sound of Gravity Doing its Thing, 2017, showing in Orchestral Manoeuvres, ArtScience Museum, 2021-2022
In her review of the exhibition, curator Tan Siuli noted:
“Orchestral Manoeuvres is a well-paced show, engaging and accessible while introducing a breadth of ideas about and around sound and sound art, with rich resonances between works. Curated to mark the tenth anniversary of the Art Science Museum, the exhibition rightfully deserves its place as a highlight on the arts calendar this year, and offers visitors a treasured opportunity to encounter some iconic works of art that I believe, in time, will be considered contemporary masterpieces.” https://artsg.com/news/exhibition-review-orchestral-manoeuvres-see-sound-feel-sound-be-sound/
Exhibition website: https://www.marinabaysands.com/museum/exhibitions/orchestral-manoeuvres.html
honor harger 