EVENING ECHOES (WITH CONOR KELLY) (1993-95)
Touring installation featuring photographs and recordings of newspaper sellers from 23 cities in Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales
Between 3 and 5pm on any weekday in the British Isles, newspaper vendors in various cities are calling out to attract attention. Some have been on the same pitch on the street for decades. Over the years some have become more economical with their cries, shortening newspaper names into indecipherable utterances whilst others choose to embellish their calls into musical chants, guttural squawks or melodious yodels. In each call in each city there is contained some trace of the name of the newspaper, together with the regional accent and personal voice of the vendor.
I decided to enlist the help of composer and musician Conor Kelly to document and celebrate this disappearing phenomenon and we toured to 23 cities in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales recording and photographing newspaper sellers. The work was presented in 2 formats. One was an installation featuring life sized photographs of the vendors with their voices coming periodically (sometimes singly and sometimes in chorus) from 8 speakers mounted high on the gallery walls - creating a virtual audio map of the British Isles. The other was a CD featuring a 12-minute composition of newspaper sellers' voices and street sounds from the 23 visited cities.
Listen to the full 12-minute version: click here
