Artists sing to the North Sea

The exhibition is a film installation called ‘Singing for the Sea’ by internationally renowned artist Bethan Huws.

It documents a group of eight female Bulgarian singers invited by Huws to perform traditional songs on Sugar Sands, Northumberland, on the coast of the North Sea, over three evenings in late July 1993.

Pitched into the wind, the haunting melodies of the Bulgarian women combine with the rumbling of the sea to create a unique polyphony of sound and voice and the work explores the artists interest in language, memory, and the specificities of place.

The film is part of The Artangel Collection, an initiative to bring outstanding film and video works, commissioned and produced by Artangel, to galleries and museums across the UK and work has been loaned by kind permission of Tate.

James Lowther, Head of Visual Art at Berwick Visual Arts said ‘We are delighted to bring this significant work by Bethan Huws to the Gymnasium Gallery. This work has been shown in galleries all over the world, but this is the first time the work has been screened in Northumberland, the County where it was filmed and provided much inspiration to Huws when she developed the work’.

The exhibition runs from June 17 until September 10 on Wednesday – Sunday, 11am-5pm. Admission free.