Do you see вЂDistendвЂ™ as functioning like a remix/ sample? In a conversation with Jared Davis you mention the importance of sharing and sampling in sound system culture and this negating western ideas of distribution and ownership.

Ashley Holmes, вЂDistendвЂ™, 2021, Leeds Art Gallery. So the installation is centred around these imagined relics at the bottom of the ocean, accompanied by a mournful, distorted soundscape of vocals and field recordings that try to explore the potential of music and sound recordings to allow us to travel to different points in history, or into the future and reflect over what has taken place. I got kinda fixated on imagining what would it be like if these ruins on the seabed were able to listen? If buildings and objects could share the things they were witness to. The more I was working with all of this material, the more I began to think about the potential of sound to memorialise something lost. I started collecting a montage of sounds that I thought responded to the site and became quite interested in ways of honouring the estimated one third of Port RoyalвЂ™s population who lost their lives in this tragedy (of which roughly 600-700 were enslaved African people).

Some of the sculptural works in вЂDistendвЂ™ are reference to the ambiguous looking objects from the nautical excavations that resembled defunct speakers and tannoys. The earthquake caused most of the city to sink below sea level and from underwater excavations there are lots of photos that have been circulating online for a while of the forts and architectural remains that sit submerged on the bed of the Caribbean Sea. Without going into too much detail about it, IвЂ™ve been thinking about the constant threat of natural disasters and extreme weather that the Caribbean faces, which led me to some of the underwater images from the landslides and earthquakes that struck Port Royal, Jamaica in 1692. I often draw on my own family lineage as a starting point in my work and have recently been thinking about the relationships I have to the rural landscapes of the Caribbean and Britain, through thinking about similar connections embedded in the stories told in music вЂ“ particularly music from Jamaica. The way I like to work with sound is often in response to specific places or locations and so вЂDistendвЂ™ loosely responds to some of these ideas in different ways. IвЂ™m interested in the many ways music and sound recordings can act as a sort of vessel for collective memory. How do you navigate working across different materials and the ways they intersect?ДЄshley Holmes : ItвЂ™s the first time for a little while that IвЂ™ve exhibited in this kind of way with sound and sculptural objects together in the same space, so IвЂ™ve been reflecting over this quite a lot recently. Rene Francis-McBrearty : In вЂDistendвЂ™ we see your interests in sculpture, installation and sound converge.

Ashley holmes