Sophy Rickett - To The River

After we had been to Bath on Monday we then got back in the coach and drove to Bristol, to the Arnolfini gallery. Here we saw an exhibition by Sophy Rickett, called 'To The River'.

Sophy Rickett - To the River

This is a video installation piece with 12 channels of sound. It was filmed near the Riven Severn in 2010 during the spring equinox, crowds of people are gathered waiting for the Severn Bore to pass. The footage was projected onto three large screens, each screen showing clips of different men, woman, and even a dog, all waiting in the dark. As you stand in the dark you can hear the sound of the water throughout the room. There are then several audio tracks of people chatting whilst waiting, these were played one by one, rather than over the top of each other.As they wait you hear snippets of their conversations, some of these are about them waiting, other are completely unrelated. 

Sophy Rickett - Framed archive

When we went upstairs there was a room containing 55 archive framed works. This is Ricketts reserch that she's pulled together, including texts, diagrams and photographs. You can see how Rickett's looked into the Bore, and that she's used a lot of archival material to achieve this installation piece.

Sophy Rickett - Framed archives

Photographs: Top photo: scanned in off gallery leaflet, others: taken by me at the gallery, 2012