Sophie Hayes’ Aftermath work now available to view on Foreground website

Did you miss Foreground’s inaugural public exhibition in its Document and Location programme earlier this Spring? Aftermath featured new work by artists and Document and Location members Sophie Hayes and Huma Mulji across two concurrent solo exhibitions sited in KIT FORM and The Launderette, two of Bristol’s newest artist run spaces. The exhibition explored the artists’ shared interest in how the representation of place can be used as a vehicle for the communication of psychological and emotional states.

Hayes’ installation for a former launderette consisted of two related works using sound and photographic images. The first work depicted a nondescript rural fly tip in an unspecified location through two large-scale photographs – the aftermath of illegal waste disposal. Piles of discarded domestic furniture that lie on the left and right-hand side of a dead-end road were split into two images. These images were accompanied by an intrusive abstract audio composition that dominated the viewer and projected a sense of mounting anxiety and trauma into the uneventful rural location in the images. Together, the seemingly disconnected elements of the installation built to suggest the gaps in understanding that result from opposing viewpoints that fail to connect.

Recreated as a screen-based work to share with online audiences, Hayes’ work can now be viewed on our Online page. In addition to Hayes’ arresting new version of her work, you can now view Aftermath (footnotes), a series of letters exchanged between the artists via email that discuss the inspirations, insecurities, pressures and preoccupations that made up the 8 months before the exhibitions, on the Fieldwork page on documentandlocation.org