I make performative objects that range from experimental musical instruments to large-scale, communally played structures. Sci-fi engineering meets foraged plants like willow and water reed which have long been used for magic and music making. Metals, fibres and clays shimmer with sound when children and adults play them together.
Forms curl and unfurl as they vibrate when played, or appear frozen mid-gesture. Some shake or float like water droplets. When played by somatic dancers or reel-to-reel tape machines, they create a field of elastic bodies. You’ll hear a limpet sliding on a cymbal, or a spectre rattling at a fence.
As a child, I held a musical call-and-response conversation with plants, humming the textures, shapes, and colours that each spoke, then echoing their responses. I continue this into my practice, where I make, draw and perform sounding objects that invite audiences and participants into close listening.
The objects are bridges from one question to the next. At first it can be awkward, but by thinking about these from all angles, I make it work. To keep the sculptures flowing, I always keep an openness so they never quite settle.
Link to CV/Resume of Rita Evans
Exhibitions, sculpture and performance commissions include: MoMA NY, Art Lab: Sound Sculptures (2024-6); Tate Britain Sensory Commission, Rock, Wobble, Pluck (2024); Audiograft Festival of Sonic Art (2023); Towner Eastbourne Performance Commission (Foundation Foundation Emerging Artist Award) (2022) & Towner International Biennial (2020); Tate St Ives: Solo Exhibition & Performance (2022); Bauhaus Foundation Dessau, Haus Gropius, with works by Charlotte Posenenske (2021/22).
Talks and workshops include: LCC UAL Sound Arts Visiting Practitioner Lecture Series(2024); Harvard Graduate School, Arts & Learning, Guest Artist, Sound Art (2023); Anhalt University & Bauhaus Foundation, Architecture MA (2021); Drawing Room, Rock Paper Scissors (2021); Towner Eastbourne, Theatre of Sound (2021); Royal College of Art, MA Curating Contemporary Art (2020); Open School East (2020); South London Gallery, Nursery Workshops Series (2018); Camden Arts Centre, Family Artist-in-Residence (2018).
Rita Evans, Artist Talk as part of UAL Sound Arts Visiting Practitioner Series, 2024
Interview with Amy Lay-Pettifer for Aleph Contemporary, 2021
Interview ‘Countless Channels as yet Unnamed’ by Fay Nicholson for Salome Salmacis, March 2022.
“What first struck me about Rita’s work was its fearlessness about using wide-ranging technologies, combining the sophisticated with improvisatory and spontaneous practice. Her drawings showed a real similarity to the freedom, quirkiness, humour and enquiry intrinsic to Stephen Cripps’ sketches.” Anne Bean, Artist, Stephen Cripps’ Studio Award panel, 2015
“Rita is innovative and dynamic. Amongst artists we work with on the Learning programme Rita brings a new field for us to work in: making and thinking about sound. She has a unique and inspiring approach to weaving collaborative practice into her personal studio practice. Rita’s practice is innovative, informing and inspiring to the sector -both in terms of galleries/exhibitions as well as engagement/learning. These collaborative frameworks are very much the way we see art making developing in the future. It’s great to have worked with someone who is developing work ahead of the field.” Esther Collins, Head of Learning, Towner Gallery, 2021.
“Do you consider the objects/instruments as temporary in the mediations of collaboration and togetherness? Or are they able to transcend into further sonic embodied experiences beyond the immediate interactions?” A question posed to me during a workshop I devised for the Royal College of Art MA Contemporary Curating course, 2021.
“Rita stood out as an artist who was very motivated and spoke and illustrated a number of projects that were often ‘off the beaten track’. She already seemed to be wholeheartedly committed, with a number of engaging ideas, for projects that were well-orchestrated in her mind for Thurrock, the local environment and those who live and work there.” Ron Haselden, Artist, Stephen Cripps’ Studio Award panel, 2015