https://www.phf.org.uk/artist/ain-bailey/
Ain Bailey is a multidisciplinary artist and DJ. Her practice involves an exploration of sonic autobiographies, architectural acoustics, live performance, as well as collaborations with performance and visual artists. Her compositions often encompass field recordings and found sounds and are inspired by ideas and reflections on silence and absence, architectural urban spaces, and feminist activism.
Recent solo projects include Trioesque, a commission for Brückenmusik 27, Deutz Brucke, Cologne, Germany (2022); Version, a solo exhibition at Wysing Art Centre, UK (2021); Atlantic Railton, an audio commission for the Serpentine Pavilion (2021); And We’ll Always Be A Disco In The Glow Of Love, a solo exhibition at Cubitt Gallery, London, UK (2019).
She regularly collaborates with other artists including Sonia Boyce, Jimmy Robert and Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski. Her work extends to collaborative workshop practices where she facilitates listening sessions that explore participant’s sonic biographies. This includes the ongoing Serpentine Civic series with members of the charity Micro Rainbow, who work with and support LGBTQI+ asylum seekers and refugees. In 2023 she was the second recipient of the Cavendish Arts Science Fellow at Girton College, University of Cambridge. Her most recent work The Cavendish: A Tone Poem was created following dialogues with physicists at the Cavendish Laboratory. It is a collaboration with vocalist Marged Sion.
I feel incredibly honoured and, quite frankly, gobsmacked (with moments of ecstatic joy) to have received the Paul Hamlyn Award For Artists, in the Visual Arts category. Not having to worry about rents for my home and studio will be such a decompressing relief. Being able to keep precarity at bay for a while really is quite something. It is a seismic event for my life and my art practice. I’d like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to my nominator, the Award judges and the Foundation’s members of staff.Ain Bailey
Audio installation. 20 minutes 00 seconds duration (extract 2 minutes). The starting points for this site- and situation-specific sound work were sounds recorded in the centres of the three chambers of the Deutzer Brücke. From this sound material, Bailey composed a single work that was then played back into the spaces, which mixed with the spatial sounds surrounding and on site. Presented at Brückenmusik 27, Deutzer Brücke (Cologne, Germany, 2022).
Moving image/sound. 30 minutes duration (extract 1 minute 45 seconds). This video was created in response to the artist’s parents’ wedding album and was situated within an installation that included a wall text written by Remi Graves, also in response to Bailey’s parents’ wedding album. Presented as part of the group show Black Melancholia at CCS Bard (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, 2022).
Image of the main gallery at Wysing Arts Centre showing Version 1, depicting 59 suspended ackee sculptures and 20 minute composition. Presented at Wysing Arts Centre (Bourn, Cambridge, 2021). Image credit: Wilf Speller.
Audio installation, video, text and window text. This part of the Version exhibition was a reworking of a traditional Jamaican folk song, reinterpreted by vocalist/performer Elaine Mitchener. Presented at Wysing Arts Centre (Bourn, Cambridge, 2021). Image credit: Wilf Speller.