FREYA DOOLEY

Solo exhibition at Site Gallery, Sheffield
Current: 7 March - 26 May 2024

Documentation of the closing perfomance on 30 May, here.

False Note comprises three separate but interconnected works which explore themes of replacement and connection:

The Double (film, 28 mins, 2024)

Diamonds and Rust (film, 21 mins, 2024)

Basics of Buoyancy (song, 2 mins, 2024)

All works are captioned and audio described. The films run on a 55 minute loop.

Access information for False Note is here.

ABOUT FALSE NOTE

Exhibition essay by Angelica Sule, Director of FVU

The themes in this solo exhibition relate to the musical and idiomatic meanings of the term ʻFalse Noteʼ - which is defined in music as a note that has been muted to the point that there is no discernable pitch, but is still an essential part of the composition and its rhythm. This term also has a murkier suggestion - to strike a false note is to miss the mark, fall out of sync - reminding us of miscommunications, untruths, insincerity and inconsistencies.

The two films follow the quotidian experiences of characters who feel incompatible with the work environments they inhabit. The protagonists conform, adapt, ache and falter under insincere neoliberal systems. They participate through choice and necessity, they are both valuable and invisible, they oscillate between production and refusal, they engage in petty theft and double lives. They are trained in emotional resilience, they reclaim their time, they express unspoken comradeship through acts of not smoking and not smiling. The song Basics of Buoyancy paraphrases lyrics borrowed from Robert Chapmanʼs recent book Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism.

LIVE PERFORMANCE: Thursday 30 May, 7pm

The music in False Note has been developed in collaboration with Emma Daman Thomas (Islet, Warm Leveret). After the exhibition closes, Freya and Emma will devise a new live performance expanding on the False Note score, staged within the installation. The performance programme is generously supported by a PRS Women Make Music award. The performance is free to attend and booking information will be available soon via the Site Gallery website.

CREDITS

Written and directed by Freya Dooley
Filming and editing by Freya Dooley and Roger Graham
Music and sound design by Freya Dooley and Emma Daman Thomas
Exhibition essay by Angelica Sule, risograph printed by Biscuits Press
Curated by Angelica Sule
Producer and Associate Curator, Robyn Haddon

False Note is commissioned by Site Gallery supported by Wales Venice 10 in partnership with Artes Mundi and DAC. Research and development for False Note was supported by The Arts Council of Wales, The British School at Rome, Cove Park, and Bath Spa University. An earlier iteration of Diamonds and Rust was originally commissioned by Goldsmiths CCA, London, as a performance in 2022.

ARTIST THANKS

Robyn Haddon, Angelica Sule, Rob Lee, Alex Pain, Matt Jamieson, Rosie Thompson, Artes Mundi: Nigel Prince, Liv Penrose Punnett, Melissa Hinkin; Roger Graham, Emma Daman Thomas, Keith Morgan, Tim Bromage, Hannah Wallis, Zoe Partington, PRS Women Make Music, Anthony Shapland and g39, Jon Ruddick and Shift, Goldsmiths CCA: Christy OʼBeirne, Sasha Shevchenko and Phoebe Cripps; Jan Meinema and Bath Spa University, Harry Morgan, Sam Hasler, Rhian Berryman, Tom Robbins, Clare Charles, George Manson, Cinzia Mutigli, Harriet Cooper, Louise Hobson, Clair Charalambous, AJ Kavanagh, Buddy, Rebecca May Johnson, Tob Andrews, Alessandra Giacinti, Nik Rawlings, Jake Spurgeon, and Unite the Union.

Photos by Jules Lister: 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12

Photos by Shared Programme: 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 13

May 2024

Four day residency and performance at Site Gallery, Sheffield, in collaboration with musician Emma Daman Thomas. Unravelling the False Note score, we developed new material for live performance combining voice, electronics and instrumentation. The residency and performance were staged in the exhibition installation, and featured de-constructed visuals from the films.

The performance was the culmination of the False Note solo exhibition, co-commissioned by Artes Mundi and Wales Venice 10. As an event, the performance was an ending; but the residency itself was also about expanding the films' musical ideas into something new, collaborative and generative. False Note is about alienation from the structures which the protagonists are reliant upon; it's central characters are emotionally exhausted by their work and confined within claustrophobic split-screen, when visible at all. Misaligned and incompatible with their environments, their efforts of disruption bear little consequence: their days are cyclical, they grind, and are ground down.

Where False Note is about the pressure to perform and the threat of replacement, where it's characters strive for connection but achieve it only fleetingly, the perfomance - as an active unravelling of these narrative structures, and a collaborative effort - was an opportunity to untether.

The sonic iteration of False Note is currently being developed as an EP, which will be out in the world later this year, and is also supported by my PRS Women Make Music Award.

Credits

Voice, synth, electronics, lyrics: Freya Dooley

Voice, bass guitar, synth: Emma Daman Thomas

Sound engineering: Rob Lee

Producer: Robyn Haddon

Visuals, editing support: Roger Graham

Live visuals: Tom Robbins

With thanks to Laura Clarke and Angelica Sule

Supported by Artes Mundi, Wales Venice 10 and PRS Foundation

Photos by Jules Lister

All you need to do is take it
Freya Dooley & Cinzia Mutigli
2023
55’30’’
HD film with stereo sound, colour, 1920 x 1920

Collaborative solo exhibition at GS Artists, Swansea
02.06.23 - 24.06.23
Supported by Arts Council of Wales

All You Need To Do Is Take It explores relationships between self-help culture and consumerism, and private and public behaviours in connection to neoliberal, individualised approaches to fulfilling both real and invented needs. The work considers some of the ways we are encouraged and expected to navigate ourselves through unstable systems.

The semi-fictional protagonists narrate their self-soothing mechanisms, ‘solutions’ and distractions from difficult feelings and structures of un-wellbeing. The episodic structure gradates through shifting moods and landscapes of Candy Crush Saga, impulse buying, voices of authority, Tupperware, blisters, and imagined encounters with Gwyneth Paltrow.

12 interconnected scenes expand on scenarios such as clothes shopping in a supermarket or collecting a parcel to reflect on wider subjects of money, use, value, authority, and depression: the frictions of an interior emotional life making contact with the external world, and the blisters that this rubbing creates.

The film’s narration is captioned. Presented in a square 1080x1080 format, the animated landscapes and soft colour gradients are evocative of ubiquitous social media infographics and instagrammable affirmations instructing us to feel better and be more bearable.

The project is supported by the Arts Council of Wales. The research and development stages of the project were supported by the Arts Council of Wales, Fieldwork, Lizzie Lloyd & WITTA and Arnolfini.

Printed imagery on the exterior of the gallery depicts bulging bubblewrap and the soft colour gradients ubiquitous on social media infographics and instagrammable affirmations.

More info
Interview with Cinzia Mutigli and Freya Dooley by Anja Stenina

Access

Audio Description

The film’s narration is captioned, but not the sound. Audio description of the exhibition space is available at the front of the gallery, with headphones hung on the wall on your right. The exhibition is wheelchair accessible, and there is seating in the space. Some of the texts that have informed our research are available to browse at the back of the gallery.

Time codes for each chapter:

1. Candy Crushes (00’00’’)
2. Redirection (03’20’’)
3. Rescue fantasies (14’36’’)
4. Not working (16’45’’)
5. Confessions (21’57’’)
6. Soft spot (31’14’’)
7. No limits (34’27’’)
8. True choice (35’38’)
9. Your choice (38’40’’)
10. Self-contained (39’40’’)
11. Let’s go deeper (47’00’’)
12. Maybe it’ll be fine (50’20’’)

Credits and thanks

Photos: Michal Iwanowski

Written, performed and edited by Freya Dooley & Cinzia Mutigli
Sound Design by Freya Dooley
Animated visuals by Cinzia Mutigli

Animated captions by Roger Graham

Audio Description written and read by Anthony Shapland

Exhibition design by Freya Dooley & Cinzia Mutigli

Technical support and build from Aled Simons, Demian Johnston, Harry Morgan, g39 and Jon Ruddick

A warm thanks to:
Aled Simons, Anja Stenina, Anthony Shapland, Clare Charles, Demian Johnston, g39, Harry Morgan,
Helen Clifford, Jane Simpson, Jon Ruddick, Roger Graham.

For their support in the developmental stages of the project, thanks to:
Arts Council of Wales, Phoebe Davies & Fieldwork, Lizzie Lloyd & Phil Owen. A test-bed performance of the writing in its early stages was presented at WITTA, Arnolfini, Bristol in April 2023.

WITTA (Writing In / To / Through Art) is a research initiative, founded at UWE Bristol by Dr Lizzie Lloyd and co-run with Dr. Kit Poulson. It brings together arts practitioners and researchers from across the university and beyond who are interested in the broad crossovers with, and intersections between, words and art.

Performance in collaboration with Emma Daman Thomas

Spit & Sawdust, Cardiff

March 2023

Multi-channel sound performance made in collaboration with Emma Daman Thomas, which reflects on the mechanics of speech and voice, identity and song. Staged within the bowl of Spit and Sawdust’s skatepark, this expermiental performance incorporated soundscape, song, improvisation and narrative text. The spoken narrative describes the experiences of Flat, a protagnoist struggling with loss of language, who embarks on a charged vocal therapy session with the Communication Expert to address their incoherence.

Supported by Emma’s residency with Pase, Venice with The British Council, my Artes Mundi Wales in Venice 10 commission, and Arcade Campfa.

Photos courtesy Spit & Sawdust

With thanks to Shift & Jon Ruddick

Listen here

Recently included in ‘Rome, A Portrait’, at Palazzo Espozioni, Rome, Italy in July 2023. Curated by Magic Lantern Film Festival.

’Useless and Precious’ is an experimental sound composition produced from a personal archive of vocal recordings, intercepted by samples of a monologue in Fellini’s 8 ½ (1963); a film about a director’s struggle through a fragmented creative process.

Also mixed in 8-channel ambisonic, binaural and stereo versions.

An R&D compositon as part of a wider project supported by Wales Venice 10 Artes Mundi commission and Bath Spa University.

Photo: Photograph of the edge of Cinecitta Studios, Rome, taken in October 2021

Performance, Goldsmiths CCA, London
July 24 2022
Six-channel sound installation and live reading

Excerpt here

Transcript here

Full performance on the Goldsmiths CCA Channel

Goldsmiths CCA commissioned Diamonds and Rust, a new live performance within the context of Virginia Overton’s exhibition Animal Magnetism. The performance combined multi-channel sound installation with spoken narrative text, moving around and against Overton’s architectural and sculptural works in the basement of the CCA building.

Encompassing spoken voice and live-mixed musical composition, Diamonds and Rust was structured around a monologue about function, replaceability and incompatible value systems within a precarious working environment. Across the 40 minute sprawling soundtrack, a series of scenes are narrated in which the protagonist, Jane, moves through the cyclical rhythm of a finding and maintaining a generic office job. Jane navigates states of usefulness and dysfunction, frequenting increasingly necessary cigarette breaks with a growing group of colleagues during which no-one, except Mark, actually smokes.

The sound composition encompasses manipulations of live and recorded voice, field recordings and samples which respond to the surfaces, substances and textures of the exhibition, elaborating on broader themes of visibility, effort, and futile attempts at reclaimed time. Industrial chimings, woody clunks and vocal rhythms - with nods to electronic musical influences - create repetitive grinds and aggregated beats interrupted by brief uplifts and moments of synchronicity.

Drawing parallels in my own process with Overton’s implementation of raw, reused, and reimagined materials within institutional contexts, the narrative uses interpretations and anecdotes gathered from some of Overton’s pieces as catalysts, ventriloquising invisible characters indicated or imagined in the works. Both Overton and I recontextualise fragments of previous works within new ones. Diamonds and Rust does this too, making use of out-takes and off-cuts, and reimagining characters from other pieces within new roles and scenarios.

The title, Diamonds and Rust, is shared with one of Overton’s works named after the song Joan Baez wrote about her memories of a formative relationship. In the work, the title also refers to capitalist cliches of pressure in relation to value and opportunity, alongside the lucky and corrosive qualities of bird shit.

Features the voices and improvisations of Jon Ruddick, Sam Hasler, Alice Burrows, Emma Daman Thomas, Chapter Choir and Richard Bowers. It also feature’s two electronically dictated quotes from the book Sonic Agency: Sound and Emergent Forms of Resitance by Brandon Labelle (pub. Goldsmiths Press, 2020) about music/musak’s effect on the psychology and behaviour of the worker.

With thanks to Jon Ruddick and Shift, Cardiff
Photos by Guillermo Moreno Mirallas

A Certain Way of Feeling Something
2021-22
Single-channel HD film with stereo sound and English subtitles
16 mins

Excerpt

Supported by the Creative Wales - BSR Fellowship at The British School at Rome 2021

Currently screening as part of the group exhibition ‘Aggregate’, London, until 29 May 2022

Taking it's title from a quote by Pier Paolo Pasolini, and combining an original musical score with a collection of personal footage, A Certain Way of Feeling Something is a music-video which draws parallels between personal and polticial desires, where bodies fall in and out of synchronisation in collective movement.

An introspective, fragmented spoken monologue reverberates across an Italo-disco inspired soundtrack, borrowing some of the genre’s characteristics of bodily-longing, choreographed dance, and electro-vocal manipulations.

The film is not rooted to one place or time, and the footage comprises filming which took place over seven years at various locations; including a community dance-hall in Hämeenkyrö, Finland, a performance bar in Beppu, Japan, on various journeys in Rome, Italy, and domestic scenes from Wales. The footage, often shot on a phone, captures unexpected moments of movement in unfamiliar places.

The film is the second iteration of the sound composition, which was originally developed as a sound installation at The British School at Rome, Italy.

With thanks to Marta Pellerini, Lara Smithson, Silvia Pepitoni and Giuseppe Pellegrino, and to Harry, Rebecca, Eleanor, Amir, Matt, Hiroka, Rachel and Jacob.

Listen to an excerpt here

Stereo sound installation, lighting

16 mins
Installed as a sound installation at The British School at Rome, Italy

Developed during a three-month residency (September - December 2021) during my Creative Wales Fellowship at British School in Rome. During the residency my research has been rooted in the history and politics of dubbing and creative uses of post-synchronised sound tracking in Italian Cinema. My recent work explores forms of synchronisation and discord between images, sounds, voices, places and bodies; with a porous approach to influences spanning cinema, opera, Italo-disco, electronic music, poetry and fictionalised anecdotes.

Interview with Marta Pellerini about my research at the British School at Rome

A Certain Way of Feeling Something reimagines the BSR auditorium – already a space for listening, albeit a different kind – as an emptied school disco. The soundtrack merges writing around the authority, disembodiment and collectivity of the voice with musical references to Italo-disco and the genre's characteristic themes of longing and attachment, choreographed bodies and electronic vocal manipulations.

Composed and narrated by Freya Dooley
With samples of an interview with Sylvia Pepitoni, the film Mamma Roma, and the line “these late days of inventory and rearrangement” is borrowed from a poem by John Ashbery written in 1970 (title unknown).

The title ‘A Certain Way of Feeling Something’ is a Pier Paolo Pasolini quote from the billingual edition of the book of his selected poetry.

With special thanks to Marta Pellerini, Lara Smithson, Harry Morgan and Giuseppe Pellegrino.

Photos 1, 2 and 4 by Roberto Apa

2022
HD film with stereo sound, 3'15''

Commissioned by Pontio, Bangor for Cymru yn Ewrop: short films by artists from Wales who are working in Europe.

A short filmic portrait of the Talking Statues of Rome, collectively known as the Congregation of Wits. This group of static stone characters absorb the anonymised voices of the public, acting as sites for political and institutional criticism, exchanging gossip and news with one another from their corners across the city. Since the 16th Century, all the statues stand in public spaces and are still active participants in public political discourse today, albeit punctuated by tourists marking their trace.


Characters (in order of appearance):

Pasquino
Il Facchino
Babuino
Abbot Luigi
Marforio
Madama Lucrezia


Commissioned by Pontio, Bangor

With thanks to the support of The British School at Rome and Arts Council Wales.

Stero sound installation

2020, 16 mins

Linen curtains, audio, transcript available in French and English.

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CURRENT

Il était une fois…

Group exhibition from the collection at FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Riems

24 June – 20 November 2022

With: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Saâdane Afif, Ouassila Arras, Alex Ayed, Sophie Barber, Orian Barki & Meriem Bennani, Étienne Chambaud, Gaëlle Choisne, Rabiya Choudhry, Julien Creuzet, Freya Dooley, David Douard, Charlotte Dualé, Nathanaëlle Herbelin, Florence Jung, LOW PROFILE, Randa Maroufi, Juliette Mock, Nicolas Momeim, Joanna Piotrowska, Sara Sadik, Rosalie Schweiker, Agnès Thurnauer, Julia Watchel

Curated by: Marie Griffay, Director of the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne

More information about the exhibition

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Ventirolquy for Radio was aquired by the national collection at FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France in 2022. Originally commissioned by Holden Gallery, Manchester as an online broadcast for ‘Interruptions’

Review by Chris Alton for Corridor 8

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‘Ventriloquy for Radio’ is a futile performance for bad listeners. Two characters, Parrot and Protagonist, are folding in on themselves in their shared living space, each interrupting the other’s interior worlds.
Ventriloquism is a monologue split into dialogue. It is the act of speaking through something: a speaker, a character, an invented extension of the self. The piece stutters a dialogue between the Protagonist and their recently acquired companion Parrot, who barged their way into Protagonist's domestic life through the window. The conversation recalls an increasingly co-dependent relationship as they loop and repeat one another's attempted articulations around solitude, care and attention.

Performed by Keith Morgan and Freya Dooley
Written by Freya Dooley
Sound design by Freya Dooley

Photos: Ventiloquy for Radio by Freya Dooley, exhibition view in Il était une fois…, 2022, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne. © Photo Martin Argyroglo

More info here

Transcript here

Jerwood Solo Presentations 2021

Jerwood Arts, London

Multi-channel audio installation, bespoke seating, monochrome print and acrylic paint, alternate captioned plays

42 minutes

Listen to stereo excerpts of the work here

Captioned version available

Response by Helen Frosi

Response by Marek Sullivan

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Temporary Commons is an immersive multi-channel sound installation which weaves together a fictional narrative of precarious living. Peoccupied by the threat and allure of the unseen, the protagonist’s domestic interior is infiltrated by dodgy plumbing, turbulent neighbours, unpredictable weather, canned laughter and an invasive landlord.

In a series of scenes set within the porous walls of a rented terraced house, the protagonist recounts the tension of hidden leaks, unstable structures and their own futile attempts at control and connection. As it wheezes and strains under pressure, the house becomes another character: both eavesdropping and overheard as it slowly sinks into uneven ground.

Oscillating between conditions of intrusion and invitation, Temporary Commons is occupied by contradictory states. What is hidden seeps to the surface and what is private becomes shared as the slowly sinking house invites moments of fleeting communion through the domestic commons of the party wall. Te work describes the harmony and discord, the comfort and irritation, and the shared and shifted responsibility of living alongside others.

The central score is produced in collaboration with musician and artist Emma Daman Thomas and layers speech, lyric and domestic recordings to create a sculptural, polyphonic soundtrack.

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Written and narrated by Freya Dooley

Music by Emma Daman Thomas and Freya Dooley

Vocals by Emma Daman Thomas

Additional narration by Rebecca Knowles

Mix engineering by Freya Dooley

Captions by Freya Dooley in consultation with Collective Text and Ciaran Stewart

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In Conversation: Freya Dooley and Helen Frosi

Listen here

Audio broadcast of a conversation about Temporary Commons with Helen Frosi, a sonic collage using the themes of water in the work as departure points for conversation and featuring captioned excerpts of the work. Helen Frosi is an interdisciplinary artist-curator and producer whose practice pivots around ecological thought, poetics, aspects of gifting and alternative forms of economy, with a focus on the creative, social, and political dimension of sound, hearing and listening.

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With special thanks to Emma Daman Thomas, Arts Council of Wales, Ciaran Stewart, Emilia Beatriz/Collective Text, Harry Morgan, g39, Anthony Shapland, Andy Davies, Jon Ruddick, Cinzia Mutigli, Louise Hobson, Sean Edwards, Rhiannon Lowe, Roger Graham and Sam Hasler.

Thanks to the Jerwood Arts team: Harriet Cooper, Louis Jones, Mirren Kessling, Zeinab Saleh, Rob Davis, Kenji Takahashi and Laura Hindmarsh.

Commissioned by Jerwood Arts for Jerwood Solo Presentations 2021 with additional support from Arts Council of Wales

Photos by Anna Arca

Press release here.

NO TIME TO PLAN AN ENDING

Group exhibition at g39, Cardiff

15.10.21 - 18.12.21

Becca+Clare, Freya Dooley, Rebecca Gould, Rhiannon Lowe, Will Roberts, Neasa Terry

More info here

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The Eavesdropper, 21 mins (2021)
Single-channel split-screen HD film with stereo sound

Alternate captioned and non-captioned screenings

Listen to the soundtrack here

“The large scale moving-image installation is a rhythmic visual collage exploring connections between sonic figures and environmental patterns. Referencing forms of fragmented time and space in split-screen cinema, and the ‘infinite’ imaginary terrains of 19th century myriorama cards, a scenic extractive landscape is projected across a series of geometric panels, its edges intercepted by magnified images, pulses, and beats.

Freya’s commission returns to recurring themes in her practice of scale and attention in relation the environments which surround us. The work’s origins are loosely based on ‘Un Re en Ascolto’, a short story by Italo Calvino about a King’s obsessive attempts to keep a grip of his power by listening-in on invisible threats; terrified of the potential to be overthrown by the unionised masses that exist beneath his reign. Under restless aural surveillance, the architecture of his surroundings absorbs and transforms -- becoming an ear, a shell, a clock – and the rhythms of his regulated structures are disrupted as time wears on. Digressing outwards from this central premise, The Eavesdropper imagines loose lips and vibrant bodies within a fabricated landscape which slips out of control.”

With thanks to Roger Graham, Sam Hasler, Rhiannon Lowe and Lexi Stevens.

Captions by Freya Dooley and Roger Graham

Originally commissioned for Green Man Festival 2021

Installation photos by Ric Bower

The Eavesdropper, 21 mins

Single-channel split-screen HD film with stereo sound across four speakers, 6.5m x 2.5m

Site-specific outdoor commission for Green Man Festival 2021

Supported by Arts Council Wales, Arts Council England and Green Man Trust

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Watch an excerpt here

Listen to the soundtrack here

“ ‘The Eavesdropper’ appears at nightfall on the far bank of the Fortune Falls Pond. The large scale moving-image work is a rhythmic visual collage exploring connections between sonic figures and environmental patterns. Referencing forms of fragmented time and space in split-screen cinema, and the ‘infinite’ imaginary terrains of 19th century myriorama cards, a scenic extractive landscape is projected across a series of geometric panels, its edges intercepted by magnified images, pulses, and beats. The work features an original soundtrack which bleeds between the sounds of the festival that contains it; beating in and out of focus, back and forth from earshot, depending on the time of day.

Freya’s commission returns to recurring themes in her practice of scale and attention in relation the environments which surround us. The work’s origins are loosely based on ‘Un Re en Ascolto’, a short story by Italo Calvino about a King’s obsessive attempts to keep a grip of his power by listening-in on invisible threats; terrified of being overthrown by the unionised masses that exist beneath his reign. Under restless aural surveillance, the architecture of his surroundings absorbs and transforms -- becoming an ear, a shell, a clock – and the rhythms of his regulated structures are disrupted as time wears on. Digressing outwards from this central premise, Freya’s commission for Greenman imagines loose lips and vibrant bodies within a fabricated landscape which slips out of control. “

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With thanks especially to Roger Graham, and to Sam Hasler, Rhiannon Lowe, Anthony Shapland and g39 who supported the development of the work, and the installation and production team at Green Man: Lexi Stevens, Rhodri Nichols, Stav Hanks, Rupert Jenkyn Jones, Kat Apulse, Jennifer Taylor and Dan Pasteiner.

Photos by Anna Arca

16 mins
HD single-screen film with stereo sound
Commissioned by Beppu Project, Japan and supported by Wales Arts International
English and Japanese subtitles
Japanese translation by Max Marx

Scenes From Between the Mountains and the Sea was developed in February 2020 during a residency in Beppu, a coastal city in the Oita prefecture of the Kyushu region of Japan.

The film explores how corporeal and geographical bodies power and maintain themselves over time. Beppu is abundant with communal hot spring baths, and geothermal volcanic regions locally termed "Hells". The work was informed by the ecology of Beppu and specifically, the connections between the volcanic surroundings and the communities who utilise and socialise its resources. Central to both intimate personal routine and social ritual, water passes between bodies in transient forms. Water circulates through ground, air and body, and steam expires from the orifices of the city. The silent narrator, a visitor, seeks out restoration through domestic routine, with a renewed attention to their own internal mechanisms in relation to their surroundings. Out-of-sync in body and clock, they slip between their interior world and a peripheral experience.

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Beppu Project also produced this digital documentation of the project, and the Kashima Artist in Residence Programme as a whole.

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With special thanks to Hiroka Yamashita, Mari Ayaki, Akiko Nakayama, Masayo Matsuda, Shusuke Nishimatsu, Aki Nagasaka, Yasuka Tachibana, Yukari Ohira, Abe Tamotsu, Yuji Taneki, Yosiyuki Yamamoto, Shoko Tsukita, Jun’ya Yamaide and Harry Morgan.

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海と山、繋がれるシーン

監督 フレイヤ・ドゥーリー

翻訳 マックス・マルクス

山下紘加、 綾木真理 、中山晃子 、松田雅代、 西松秀佑、長坂有希 、立花泰香 、大平由香理、阿部保、種木悠二、山本善之 、月田尚子、 山出淳也 と ハリー・モーガン

と 心から感謝している別府の皆様

'The Understudy' is a monologue about attention-seeking, desert locusts and blurred personas. Exhausted characters are broken, bitten and chewed over, including a neurotic protagonist with a reluctance to perform.

Read an excerpt of the script here

The first iteration was performed at Leeds Art Gallery, and the next performance will be at South London Gallery on January 25th.

This work was commissioned by New Contemporaries for New Writing with New Contemporaries, a programme developed in collaboration with artist Nick Thurston and art writing platform Corridor8. The selected artists are: Jude Browning, Lucy Rose Cunningham, Freya Dooley, Malachy Harvey, Leo Hermitt and Ruby Lewis.

Articles:

In Response to Changing Practices: New Writing with New Contemporaries by Holly Grange

Call it what you like. Art as words, spoken and heard, Review of performances at Leeds Art Gallery by Amelia Crouch

In Their Own Words: New Contemporaries artists on using language in their practice, Profile by Lara Eggleton

With thanks to James Ashton, Nick Thurston and Eileen Daly

Photos 1-4: Freya Dooley, The Understudy (2019), Performance for New Writing with New Contemporaries at Leeds Art Gallery. Photos by Jules Lister, courtesy New Contemporaries

Photos 5-6: The Understudy (second iteration), Performance at South London Gallery (2020). Photos by Samuel Nightingale

SOLO EXHIBITION, EASTSIDE PROJECTS, BIRMINGHAM

01.03.19 - 27.04.19

Listen here: Excerpt (1) / Excerpt (2)

An immersive soundscape of broken melodies and discordant harmonies, borrowing it’s title from ‘Super Trouper’, the earworm by the not-so-harmonious pop group Abba.

The ‘group’ is a force for belonging- simultaneously claustrophobic and comforting, embracing and alienating. Agnetha eventually retreated, to pursue solitude in the place of expectation.

Layers of collected vocals, hooks, choral fragments and field recordings fall in and out of step. Voices compete for attention, drowned out by their own chorus. The work explores anxious moments of synchronisation and discord when trying to keep up with your own performance.

Published as a vinyl record edition by Eastside Projects, 2020

The exhibition comprises of a four-channel sound installation alongside a large-scale collage of risograph prints produced with Foundation Press.

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PEOPLE ARE STRANGE MACHINES by Rhiannon Lowe. Commissioned text in response to the exhibition

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LISTENING PARTY: Freya Dooley with Phoebe Davies and Ashley Holmes

Friday 5 April, 6-9pm

SOLO MIX by Ashley Holmes

CHORUS MIX by Phoebe Davies

Borrowing the model of a two-channel silent disco with commissioned mixes by artists Phoebe Davies and Ashley Holmes, The Listening Party created a social space for private listening. The event acts as a disruption to the exhibition ‘Somewhere in the crowd there’s you ‘, introducing new voices and synchronicities to the installation.

Listening Party is a result of ongoing conversations between the three artists around music, sound and sound-tracking: the intimacy of listening as a way to alter or accompany mental, emotional and physical states.

A print by Freya Dooley which includes the written prompts and score for the event is available from Eastside Projects for the duration of the exhibition.

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This project is supported by the Arts Council of Wales.

Special thanks to Jon Ruddick.

Vocalists: Alice Burrows, Richard Bowers, Roger Graham, Caritas Choir, the Cardiff Tuneless Choir, Chapter Singers and Cinzia Mutigli.

Photos by Stuart Whipps (1 , 3, 4, 5)

and Zunaira Muzaffar (2)

Solo exhibition

CHAPTER GALLERY, CARDIFF

Exhibition: 30.03.19 - 14.07.19

Watch the full version of ‘The Host’ (2019) here

Watch the full version of ‘Speakable Things’ (2018) here

‘The Host’, a new multi-screen audio-visual work, takes Mark Twain’s 1876 short story A Literary Nightmare as it’s departure point, in which the protagonist is tormented by an earworm jingle and only finds relief by passing this affliction on to an unwitting audience. Elaborating on the real and imagined experiences of a reluctant host to dream-like states, stubborn parasites and repeated riffs, Dooley explores the effects of listening on emotional and physical states. The song settles inside of the body it borrows deviates from existing literary narratives to explore the potential and limitations of the voice, consumed bodies and occupied minds.

The exhibition is accompanied by a printed publication featuring texts by Cherry Smyth and Nadia Hebson.

Download a pdf version of the book here and the insert by Nadia Hebson here.

EVENTS

Synaptic Island Listening Session # 11 /// EARWORMS

Listen to the mix here

Freya Dooley invites Synaptic Island to host a listening session at Chapter as part of her current exhibition ‘The Song Settles Inside of the Body it Borrows’ with the theme: EARWORMS, spreading, hooks, riffs and multiples, chewing over, absorption, blockages, real and imagined voices, rhythms, interruptions... 

Participants are invited to join us for an evening of collective listening; to bring one track in response to the theme to share with the group. Synaptic Island are a collective of women and non-binary DJs.

READING GROUP

An informal reading group around two texts which have informed the exhibition by Shirley Jackson and Sophie Collins.

This project is supported by the Arts Council of Wales

Photos by Mark Blower

Art in the Bar Commission for Chapter, Cardiff

Curated by Catherine Angle

March - August 2019

Large scale installation from a risograph print produced with Foundation Press, during a short residency I undertook with them earlier this year. Foundation Press are an experimental risograph press based in The National Glass Centre in Sunderland, run by Deborah Bower and Adam Phillips.

Commissioned for Chapter’s cafe bar alongside my solo exhibition ‘The song settles inside of the body it borrows’ which runs from 29 March - 14 July 2019.

Supported by the Arts Council of Wales

10 Feb - 11 April 2018

Litmus Commission, Oriel Davies, Powys. Curated by Louise Hobson

Installation with single channel digital film with sound, 2018

Watch the full version of ‘Speakable Things’ (2020) here

Essay by Cherry Smyth

Text by Louise Hobson on thisistomorrow

Speakable Things is a fragmented visual essay about vocal control, using Anne Carson’s essay The Gender of Sound as a departure point. The film intercepts mythological narratives of the nymph Echo with lyrical observations, tabloid gossip, and a soundtrack of broken vocables. Meandering between lip-syncs and landscapes, song and speech, melody and cacophony, Speakable Things explores the loss, leakage and leverage of the voice.

The alto part in the soundtrack is sung by opera and classical singer Alice Burrows. 

With thanks to Cinzia Mutigli, Louise Hobson, Alice Burrows, Roger Graham and Metal at Southend-on-Sea, where this work was developed.

More information about Litmus here

Images 1-4: Stills, 3-5: Installation at Oriel Davies, photos by Ric Bower, 6-8: Installation of Speakable Things as part of the solo exhibition ‘The Song Settles Inside of the Body it Borrows’ at Chapter Gallery, Cardiff, 2019. Photos by Mark Blower

Performance in collaboration with Cinzia Mutigli, commissioned by Experimentica: About Time, the annual international live art and performance festival at Chapter, Cardiff. (50 mins approx)

BEING SHARON is a performance about soap operas, expanded outside of the confines of the TV screen. The soap is responsible to 'everyday' lives, to 'everyday' people, every day. The performance intersects personal anecdotes, with the lives and tribulations of a collection of characters, true-to-life, or not. The soap is responsible to 'everyday' lives, to 'everyday' people, every day... perpetual loops and comfortable melodrama. Simultaneously  mundane and spectacular.

The performance combines autobiography with fiction, to explore the sexual politics of soap operas and how snobbery, guilt and pleasure nestle alongside each other. Considering the soap's flattened politics, we meander across narratives to critique and celebrate our favourite soaps and the lives they inhabit. 

Photos by Warren Orchard

fs presents ‘The Host’ a text and sound work performed as part of ‘Reading Week’ at CBS.

The performance was a text-in-progress read aloud over a soundtrack; sluggish and stuttered. The text is anchored by fragments of Mark Twain’s short story ’A Literary Nightmare’ and tangents around parasitic pop songs, teeth grinding, chewy earworms and a mind occupied. Stops and starts. The performance- about various states of sticking and being stuck- acted as a fleshing out. An itch. It’s a fourth draft of something not-quite-yet.

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Part exhibition, part contemplative study space at CBS Gallery in Liverpool, ‘Reading Week’ sees a series of invited artists initiate peer support and study whilst presenting live works that deal with text and reading, words and speaking, linguistics, language, looking and learning. Situated around a specially made, malleable seating installation influenced by a collection of egg cups, an ongoing Reading List was nestled there too, with the installation playing host to a Saturday afternoon Reading Group.

The reading group I hosted the following day shared key references in my work, including a close reading of Anne Boyer’s text ‘How to go from poetry to art / How to go from art to poetry’, which you can find on her website.

Reading Week is part of fs, a project devised and programmed by Kevin Hunt.

Documentation by Rob Battersby

Performance with soundtrack at the Northern Charter, Newcastle, 2017.

As part of Syllabus III performance event 'Can I Be Me', programmed in conjunction with New Contemporaries and BALTIC.

Performance in collaboration with Cinzia Mutigli.

13 mins approx, g39, Cardiff, 2018

YOU WILL GET THE CREDIT slips in and out of sync between Milli Vanilli, Debbie Reynolds and Jean Hagen, exploring theatricality, embarrassment and (our) inevitable failures.

Performed live alongside recorded soundtrack and projected loops.

Commissioned by Holly Davey for the event Roll Credits, programmed in conjunction with her solo exhibition 'The Conversation'. 

The text references Eva Kenny’s text ‘32 things you need to know about embarrassment’.

Filmed and edited by Roger Graham

Photos by Joe Moody

Edited fragments of John Berger’s essay ‘Notes on Song’ (from Confabulations) annotated with cut ups from Rolling Stone’s cynical 2008 article ‘The Tragedy of Britney Spears’.

Performed over an instrumental karaoke track of ‘Gimme More’ by Britney Spears, the song she performed for her exhausted ‘comeback’ at the 2007 VMA awards.

Originally performed at 'A Second Tribute to JB' at Spit and Sawdust, Cardiff in 2017 and restaged at Spike Island, Bristol (pictured)

Performance in collaboration with Cinzia Mutigli, 2017

Our recent performance ‘Talk Pretending’ acts as a nucleus or starting point for the work we are currently developing. It comprises of a collection of anecdotes and personal experiences which relate to the voice, individually written and collaboratively staged.

The protagonists of these narratives range from Whitney Houston, Echo, Greek Mythology, TV extras, soap operas, Gertrude Stein, Julie Andrews, Kathy Acker and Princess Diana, alongside semi-fictional autobiographical vignettes. 

Talk Pretending was originally performed at CAB, (Cardiff Artists Book Fair,) Printhaus, Cardiff and then restaged for the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery and Museum in Swansea. 

Rhythms and Disturbances was a solo exhibition commissioned by g39 for the Unit #1 space as part of Cardiff Contemporary Festival 2016.

It is a two-channel film and sound piece incorporating a fragmented internal monologue, describing emotional and physical states between desire and anxiety. Rhythms and Disturbances reconstitutes cut-ups and references from disparate sources, including literature, remembered song lyrics and internet forums.

The project also comprised of an artist book and a performance and was supported by a Research and Development grant from the Arts Council of Wales. 

In collaboration with Cinzia Mutigli.

Installation with posters, postcard, mug, publication and office desk. Commissioned for WORK, by Stabbing Les and Pas Moi Productions, originally staged in a disused office at Broadacre House, Newcastle in 2016. 

WHAT EVERYBODY WANTS incorporates an email exchange between two bored office administrators, gossiping about coworkers, swapping fantasies, failures and motivational quotes. The posters and mugs combine self-help jargon with the KLF’s advice on how to write a number one hit single (an aspiration we’re still working on.)

Commissioned for Cardiff Contemporary Festival 2014

Anat Ben-David / Robert Bidder / Chris Brown / Matt Cook / Freya Dooley and Cinzia Mutigli / Stabbing Les / Richard Huw Morgan / Ian Watson / Jacob Whittaker

On Record was a listening, performance and exhibition space celebrating vinyl, homemade sounds and the pace, mood and painstaking editing process of the mixtape.  We invited artists working with sound, performance and words to experiment with compilation and sampling with a DIY approach.

On Record was a social space for shared listening, as well as somewhere to flick through zines, lyric sheets and artist records. Throughout the week, we invited the public to share and play their records, flexi-discs and collections.

Cardiff Contemporary is a Cardiff Council initiative co-funded by the Arts Council of Wales, developed in partnership with Cardiff’s visual art, design and architecture communities.