"Glissando" featuring Candida Powell-Williams

Commissioned by Salisbury Arts Centre, Music and art unite in this site-specific event exploring humans' historical desire to fly. Playing on mythology, technology, dreams and mechanical shortfalls, 'Glissando' is animated by colour and humour with a performance by Music Off Canvas for the Candida's exhibition opening night. The performers take inspiration from the sculptors and stories behind Powell-Williams work, including Laika the dog, Eilmer the monk and Christina the Astonishing.
The exhibition ran through July 2012.

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Candida Powell-Williams

Candida Powell-Wiliams makes large-scale sculptural instillations and performances which play with the relationship between the body and objects and confronts our sense of reality. She constructs fictitious and absurd scenarios that challenge our assumptions of utopian ideals and structures; harbouring their optimism whilst acknowledging their failings. A playful use of colour and humour animates the work intending to suggest hysteria sadness and failure- while baffling perceptions and expectations. What is real? What is fake? where are the boundaries? Candida has a Masters in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art where she was awarded the Cass Scholarship and a BA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Art. She regularly has exhibitions and commissions all over England. She has developed a relationship to theatre working as a set designer, most recently on the Francis Bacon Opera part of the Grimeborn Festival at the Arcola in Dalton and for Goldilocks at the Little Angel Theatre Islington. She had a residency in Paris at the Cite des Arts Internationale to develop her research into contempory Absurdist theatre which has subsequently led to a number of collaborations between art and theatre, testing the boundaries and subverting our expectations. She has been awarded the prestigious Sainsbury Scholarship in Painting and Sculpture for a year long residency at the British School at Rome where she will explore our touristic relationship to myth and fact.
www.candidapowell-williams.com

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Quotes

"The success of the performative element to Glissando has strengthened my ideas about how sound can contribute to the visual worlds I am creating.
To me working collaboratively and across the creative disciplines opens up and brings the artwork into the real world in a way that seems otherwise impossible. To act alone in an ivory tower would be to deny the way we function in society and limits one's audience. I collaborate because I want to bring elements into my work that I am not a specialist in and naturally during this process the work changes from 'mine' to 'ours'. When debate occurs it strengthens intentions, making everyone more articulate and more concise. At the point of compromise you realise there is a lot of 'stuff' that you either don't really understand or don't really care about as much as you thought you did! It is for this reason I hope to continue using these processes and methods for making my work."


Sculptor Candida Powell-Williams