William Furlong

Description

As a child in a Catholic primary school, William Furlong remembers one of the sisters asking the class to close their eyes and to listen very carefully. The sounds that he heard surprised him, and it became clear to him that we never, or hardly ever, live in complete silence. There is always some ambient sound - someone breathing, distant traffic, bird song, an occasional cough or a dog barking. This example is offered, not to suggest that Furlong immediately became an artist who uses sound as part of his repertoire, but to describe an experience that remained with him and which is relevant to his current practice as an artist.

Walls of Sound is a sculpture not only for the visual, but also for the aural sense. William Furlong uses stainless steel, digital discs and amplifiers as well as the sounds that he records and alters in many different ways so that they are right for the work, much as a painter might mix pigments on his palette. In this case the recordings were made in the woodland at Goodwood, in Chichester, on the coast and in other Sussex locations. However, like many works of art, it is not so simple: it is more than just an assemblage of audio and visual materials.

Two hollow stainless steel walls run parallel to one another for just over twelve metres, and along their length are positioned sound outlets, staggered so that they do not face one another. The surface of the steel is worked to a degree that it both reflects and absorbs the landscape, becoming part of it visually and aurally. As you move through this audio corridor you are met by different sounds - sounds which reflect the general environs where the sculpture is placed, used as a painter or sculptor uses physical matter. Furlong's stance is that of a sculptor who happens to use sound as the main ingredient of his art.