The Voice in the Shadow

Bo Lee & Workman
Bruton, UK
19.05.23 - 24.06.23

The inaugural exhibition of Bo Lee and Workman in Bruton is a solo presentation of new work by Cornwall-based artist Jonathan Michael Ray (b. 1984, High Wycombe, England). Ray takes his inspiration from a variety of sources, including archaeological collections and sacred sites, as well as fantasy, science fiction, myth, and modern abstraction. The Voice in the Shadow brings together multimedia artworks exploring the meaning of objects through markings of time and craftsmanship. The artist transforms these objects to voice alternate histories which blur between dream, fiction and memory, creating new meanings,  an atmosphere of the esoteric, and a symbiosis of the secular and the sacred.

Situated in a former Methodist church, the exhibition contains new site-specific responses to its surroundings. In these works, fragments of religious phrases, stained glass windows and the sounds of the church’s organ are reconfigured and reversed, constructing new existences in the process. In a new large-scale sculpture created for the space, Dark Lith, Ray combines the essence of a castle tower or chimney stack with that of a monolith. Standing stones or liths, from the Greek lithos (stone), can represent the physical body of an ancestral spirit, or God, and attract worship. Inspired by ancient alphabets and the practise of spirit writing, Ray inscribed the 250 stacked blocks of Cornish slate that comprise Dark Lith with an indecipherable script, further amplifying this sacred or spiritual narrative. 

Speaking about his method, Ray says: “Collecting is at the heart of my practice. Objects, materials, ideas, process, words. This is my world-building; a complex and vague amalgamation of everything that helps me question and understand existence.” 

The exhibition is accompanied by a new sound work, Reliqua, which incorporates music played on the church’s organ, created in collaboration with sound artist Benedict Mortimer.

Images of exhibition by Jesse Wild

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