Ferocious Love sets climate at Tate Liverpool
A polyphonic soundscape voiced by a Liverpool choir and footage shot inside the city’s Williamson Tunnels come together in a new audio-visual installation at Tate Liverpool.
Greek-British artist Mikhail Karikis has collaborated with The Liverpool Socialist Singers and students from Birmingham School of Art to create Ferocious Love which is going on show from Monday.
The 13-minute immersive artwork, being staged in the Royal Albert Dock venue’s Wolfson Gallery, is set in 2050 and a world where there are no more distinct seasons as we know them.
A composition of weather-like effects echoes sounds of turbulent meteorological phenomena, while two videos – one filmed in woodland in the Midlands and one in the Williamson Tunnels ahead of lockdown – feature a fictional community of young people who reflect on how a calamity might bring them together.
Ferocious Love has been commissioned by Tate Liverpool as part of its annual We Have Your Art Gallery series and is sponsored by Birmingham City University.
Previous We Have Your Art Gallery commissions have included Art Gym with Tate Collective Producers and Turner Prize-winners Assemble in 2016, and Illuminating the Wilderness with Project Artworks last year.
Ferocious Love was filmed in Williamson Tunnels (above) and woodland area (top) © Mikhail Karikis
Karikis was born in Thessaloniki and studied architecture at University College London, and art at the Slade.
He is based in London and Lisbon and his work embraces moving image, sound and other media to create immersive audio-visual installations and performances which emerge from his long-standing investigation of the voice as a sculptural material.
His sound works have been performed at the Royal Opera House and the Barbican.
In Liverpool, his work was included in the Hayward Touring exhibition Listening which came to the Bluecoat in 2015, and in 2016 his film Children of Unquiet was screened as part of the Memories of the Future at Tate Exchange.
Mikhail Karikis: Ferocious Love is at Tate Liverpool from July 27 to November 22. Book Tate Liverpool timed tickets HERE