Hearing Voices

2020



Acrylics on archival paper

Unframed works:
A4: 21cm x 29.7 cm / A3: 29.7cm x 42cm

Framed works:
A4: 28.25cm x 37cm / A3: 38.7cm x 51cm

Image: Tim Etchells
Install images: Aleksandra Warchol

Hearing Voices is a series of drawings produced by Tim Etchells in response to his encounter with people living in Luton during a number of visits to the town in the end months of 2019 and the first months of 2020. Beginning from a set of more or less unlikely and disconnected questions – What is your happiest moment or your happiest memory? What did you dream last night? When and where were you last lost? Describe the face of someone you care about? – Etchells initiated dialogues with members of the public in High Town area of Luton, using material from the resulting conversations as a prompt for new text works. Made using short excerpts and out-of-context phrases from what’s said in these playful meetings, Etchells’ drawings in the Hearing Voices series became a partial trace of his encounters with a diverse group – shopkeepers, gardeners, car park attendants, barbers, pensioners, cab-drivers – serving at the same time, as a kind of surprising and fragmentary portrait of the town and some of its inhabitants.