Film and Video Umbrella

PROJECTS

The Sunken Bell

2007

Alec Finlay

Alec Finlay's work for the Waterlog exhibition consists of a number of discrete but related elements, each predicated on the play of language, and underscored by the swell and surge of sound, as well as a deeper undertow of primal, natural forces.

The Sunken Bell, currently on display at Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich, is a work conceived in parallel with equally iconic photographs by the artist Guy Moreton, and which draws its inspiration from the shifting outlines and fluctuating fortunes of the coastline around Dunwich, once one of England's largest ports, and now almost totally lost to the sea.

Inspired by the local legend that on certain tides, bells from Dunwich's many former churches can be heard ringing below the waves, Finlay has made a series of thirteen watercolours, representing a traditional 'bell method', a score used in church bell ringing. While such methods usually consist of rows of numbers, one for each bell to be rung, here Finlay has replaced each number with a coloured circle, creating a simple pictured notation with a curiously synaesthetic effect, music having being transformed into colour. Elsewhere two life-buoys upon which have been lettered some of Finlay's familiar 'circle poems', embellish the surface of this otherwise drowned world. 

Associated Projects with Alec Finlay:

Waterlog, 2007
The Sunken Bell, 2007

Associated Publications with Alec Finlay:

Waterlog: Journeys Around an Exhibition