Showing as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2019, Migratory Motor Complex (2017), is James Richards' six-channel electro-acoustic installation, exploring the capacity of sound to render artificial spaces and locate sonic and melodic events within them. Woven throughout the piece are re-occurring vocal and musical motifs that have been developed in collaboration with Kirsten Evans and Samuel Williams, students of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. The work is tuned in-situ, with Richards reacting to the acoustic contingencies of Collective's City Dome to create a cinematic and multi-sensory experience — an arrangement of vivid emotional cues to be navigated subjectively.
James Richards’ interest lies in the possibility of the private amidst the chaos of everyday media. His work makes use of a growing bank of material that includes found and recorded sound, cinema, works by other artists, camcorder footage, murky late-night TV and archival research.
Read more about Migratory Motor Complex in the information which accompanies the exhibition here.
Migratory Motor Complex was curated and produced by Chapter for Wales in Venice at the 57th Venice Biennale of Art 2017. The exhibition was commissioned by the Arts Council of Wales and Wales Arts International with support and collaboration from the Welsh Government and British Council. A new iteration travels to Collective for James Richards' first solo show in Scotland and is made possible with support from the Art Fund.
