Ineffable draws together artists working with the hard to describe, almost impossible to articulate and the unexplainable. This can be following a particular feeling or teasing out something vague or yet to be articulated. Or it can be something overwhelming that is more than human or larger than life itself. It can even seem to have an unfathomable depth that defies categorisation and measurement and is difficult to grasp. It is the ground that keeps changing shape as you run across it and the dream that cannot quite be remembered. There are no firm definitions here with the indefinable travelling through a sound, shape, texture or sensation. Sometimes this can make your skin crawl or on other occasions even take you with it to a place unknown and not experienced before. Or it can just make you feel good and be acknowledged as a place where words are inadequate.
Curated by Kim Donaldson with Jiayang Zhang
Featuring:
The Ghosts of Nothing
Lewis Gittus
Claire Lehmann
Christopher Theofanous
Karina Utomo
Chaohui Xie
Special performance on Saturday 17th October 3pm
Heolstor is an ongoing collaborative performance project by Lewis Gittus and Karina Utomo, taking its name from an archaic term for darkness, concealment or a hidden recess. Conceived as a sonorous grotto in which non-visible realms become manifest, the work brings Utomo’s extra-normal vocal practice into dialogue with Gittus’ explorations of synthesis, resonance and corporeal sound.
This new iteration expands the work through demung and gong, bringing the resonant properties of bronze into an evolving interplay of voice, contact microphones and synthesis. Across waves of sonic density, texture, and mass, Utomo and Gittus’ practices enter a process of reciprocal feedback, in which unanticipated moments of tensile listening emerge and vanish. Through vibration, resonance and accumulation, Heolstor creates a space in which sound is encountered as a fleeting material presence.
Chaohui Xie, detail of Gilded Past, 2025. Digital print on laminated glass and mirror, 60cm x 40cm.