Project room at Berliner-Liste, Berlin September 2013.

‘Timepieces’ is a work that combines a large collection of small tempera paintings with a sound composition in stereo.

The pictures are presented as if they were specimens, semi transparent snips of paper arranged and packed tightly together in 20 uniformly sized frames. They fall into two distinct categories: portraits, sampled from newspapers, magazines and the internet or fresh new images, created from scratch. This second type may appear like patterns but are attempts to mime moments spent using the hands – stitching or embroidering, echo the soft, wordless communication done by touch. In their uniqueness these pieces differ only ever so slightly from each other, but in their sameness they attempt to speak with each their voice, as indicators of times and places.

If you live in the United Kingdom, you will be familiar with the title of this work as a description for the kind of cheap plastic watches you can buy in supermarkets or petrol stations, items meant to record the hours and cheer up your wrist. We have used it to label a piece that visits a period from the mid 1960 to the present day or to be precise, as far back as the painter of these images can remember. It is a work that joins the public and predominantly male with the domestic and feminine. Such divisions may well be harder to defend as we approach the present day. You could say that it is a record containing little snips of the past, rearrangements displaying both joys and tensions hidden in the material of memory.

The audio track that accompanies these cuts, sits somewhere between a hum and a pulse and yet even if it sounds nothings like it, has all the intentions of a lullaby. It is kept as dark as the pictures are bright, earthbound to counter their airiness. It was generated from old recordings by the many performers featured in the paintings, slowed down and held on a few, single notes.

If we were to sum our intentions, then stating that this is a record of being inside rather than outside of time is fair. It is our attempt to measure what it are like to be a participant and not the observer. The work wants to imply what happens when life is gauged, not by numerical dates but by a human calendar-the plastic clocks that pop up daily- and how their gestures interact with the wordless hope and longings, ups and downs in our own domestic life. As we live, we spend time but we also attempt to earn something back by rearranging our memories to understand what happens. We see today against what we saw yesterday and as we cut and dissect what we encounter we are editing an archive which is both flowing and organic.

Paintedwithsound received generous support from the organizers of Berliner-Liste in order to realize this new work.