Helen Keller termed it beautifully; “When you lose your vision, you lose contact with things. When you lose your hearing, you lose contact with people” - for how would we experience life if it were not through the senses? The Art of Hearing draws our appreciation to one of our most important senses, the one that connects us all; the gift of sound.
There is no way to understand what life would be like with a severe or profound hearing loss, unless you are living it. Until then it is impossible to fathom how far-reaching the absence of sound has on every day life, especially on relationships. For most, the only hope they have to hear again is with a cochlear implant. An implant gives back more than sound. It gives back quality of life.
The Art of Hearing is a fundraising opportunity for the Pindrop Foundation, the non-profit, public face of the Northern Cochlear Implant Trust that governs the implant programme. Their focus is to raise public awareness about the technology available and to provide people access to implants as a matter of right, ensuring that those in need receive one in a timely manner.
Other than private surgery, there is no other public funded service in the northern region.
A word from the Chairperson,
Since the first cochlear implant operation in December 1986, almost 400 people in New Zealand have had their hearing restored with a cochlear implant. Currently 110 adults are on the waiting list for treatment, a number that continues to grow.
As the general age of the population advances, government funding will not be able to keep pace with the demand. The waiting list will get longer. The impact of this on our communities will be significant as these individuals withdraw from society.
The Pindrop Foundation is committed to reducing the waiting list by restoring hearing in adults, allowing them to reclaim what once was theirs and to take advantage of new opportunities, experiences and independence.
We are passionate about raising awareness of cochlear implants, and fundraising initiatives like The Art of Hearing, will turn our vision into reality.
DR DI MCCARTHY
This is your unique opportunity to secure one of the 60 limited edition boxed set of these works.
The Art of Hearing 2008 collection is now available as either a boxed set or as individual prints. The artists commissioned for the 2008 collection of limited edition screen prints at 560 x 760mm are:
Shane Cotton
Robert Ellis
Dick Frizzell
Sara Hughes
Judy Millar
John Pule
Please email taoh@pindrop.org.nz for more information.
Shane Cotton
With a vast repository of personal motifs at his disposal, text has remained an integral mechanism within Shane Cotton’s oeuvre, operating on multiple levels as metaphor, sign and signifier. In some cases text is rendered stylistically to impede legibility, referring to the sometimes awkward repercussions that ensue as a product of cross cultural (mis) communication and (mis) interpretation. The artist’s typography generally reflects historical associations within the works, be it cursive script from Hongi Hika’s journal as he copied the English alphabet; bold Gothic type borrowed from the Old Testament (the first book translated into the Maori language and an indispensable aid in the spread of literacy among Maori , as well, the conversion to Christianity); or the shallow incisions chiseled in Maori whakairo (carving), that over time documented a culture’s shift from oral to literal comprehension.
In Broken Water, produced especially for the Pindrop Foundation, tension between clarity and ambiguity are played out as the words ‘broken water’ are rendered in sharp contrast to the murky veil of cloud beneath. In one simple image and with two simple words Cotton encapsulates the potential dichotomy of interpretation.
For more information about Shane Cotton please view his profile at Gow Langsford Gallery here.
‘Broken Water’ 2008 560 x 760mm
Robert Ellis
The background of the print is a compilation of cartographic images using city street maps; the selection was broadly based on ideas relating to identification, location and destination. Superimposed on this are letters making up the Maori word AROHA [ love, affection, compassion]. The five pairs of hands spell out the individual letters of AROHA using an elementary alphabetical sign language. It was chosen because of its graphic simplicity and should not be confused with the NZSL which is an expressive and complex form of visual communication employing a wide range of physical body gestures. It is one of our three official languages. Several members of my family have had serious hearing problems. I was pleased to have the opportunity to work with the printers at Artrite and make a print for the Pindrop Foundation.
‘Aroha’ 2008 560 x 760mm
Dick Frizzell
I always take these specific commissions on board as if I was back in my advertising hat...selling the product...in this case...obviously... we’re selling sophisticated hearing technology...or rather the need for funding of the spread of the technology...so I cast about for a concept that’ll hopefully do that. And as usual I’m quite literal about it hence the three ‘hear no’ monkeys.
The unusual style and colouring of the group comes directly from an ancient photograph in my reference files of a horrendously fabulous collection of naïve garden art in some outback town in Australia. You never know when these things will be put to work.
For more information about Dick Frizzell please view his profile at Gow Langsford Gallery here.
‘Together Alone’ 2008 560 x 760mm
Sara Hughes
Sara Hughes has created this new screen print specifically for the Pindrop Foundation and it relates to ideas of sight, sound and language and the way that these senses and constructs can blur and overlap influencing our understanding the world; reflecting her ongoing interest in both phenomenology and semiology.[1]
“The title I have given this work ‘kzpygv’ is the made up name that the Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov used for rainbow. Nabokov was a synesthete and I am interested in how this condition; a neurologically-based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. One common form of synesthesia , that which Nabovkov experienced was the way letters are perceived as inherently colored and in his autobiography, Speak Memory , he writes about his "fine case of colored hearing..." In the green group, there are alder-leaf f, the unripe apple of p, and pistachio t ... among the reds, b has the tone called burnt sienna by painters, m is a fold of pink flannel, and today I have at last perfectly matched v with 'Rose Quartz' in Maerz and Paul's Dictionary of Colour”[2]
In this work Hughes has take the concept of Nabadov’s “private language” word for rainbow turning it into a jumbled mismatched colour wheel. “I am interested in the ways that colour and the brain function; how they create meaning, understanding and systems for us to navigate our surroundings and how they influence our cognition and perception”.
[1] Robert Leonard, Snake Oil, Chartwell exhibition catalogue, Auckland City Art Gallery, Pub 2005
[2] Vladimir Nabokov Speak Memory, P34-35 Pub 1966
For more information about Sara Hughes please view her profile at Gow Langsford Gallery here.
‘kzpygv’ 2008 560 x 760mm
Judy Millar
Working with the screenprinters at Artrite on a print for the Pindrop Foundation has been a special experience. Being an artist fascinated by the possibility art has to bypass or extend normal interpretative brain function, I was intrigued to learn how the implants work by directly stimulating auditory nerves rather than through the amplification of worldly sounds. Soundless hearing becomes something akin to abstract thinking or direct communication without the use of symbol of figure.
Working with the printers an image has come about from the process of printing itself - very simple overlays of line and colour setting up possibilities of seeing. Perhaps a beating heart, perhaps a new ear, perhaps nothing of the kind?
For more information about Judy Millar please view her profile at Gow Langsford Gallery here.
‘New Ears’ 2008 560 x 760mm
John Pule
I wanted to make something that reflected this impediment of hearing that affects people of all ages. I wanted to create a visual as well as a symbolic meaning of images and sounds, so I chose one of my poems that I thought said something about listening and sound.
In this poem the words are constantly moving around, shifting image to image, making us see mountains, oceans and forests. The poem is nature based, where great movements of sounds can be heard and seen in the words. Using ten different colours assists in making sense of things. Behind the poem, freely floating in the background I drew a bird with a flower in its beak while a smaller bird eats away at the petals. Although the bird is of a lighter colour, it does not take away from the bright colours of the words, but blends in with them.
I have not made a screen print before so the process was new to me. In this type of image making I found some exciting possibilities to experiment with in the future.
For more information about John Pule please view his profile at Gow Langsford Gallery here.
‘Small Bird’ 2008 560 x 760mm
How to order your set:
To order individual prints, a 2007 or 2008 limited edition boxed set please call Lee Schoushkoff on 021757423 or email taoh@pindrop.org.nz
Download Order FormIf you would like a brochure posted to you please email your address to taoh@pindrop.org.nz
The Pindrop Foundation would like to thank all of those that have helped us make The Art of Hearing a success. Without their contribution it would not have been possible.
Jacqueline Fahey, Dick Frizzell, Kate Small, Denys Watkins, Shane Cotton, Robert Ellis, Sara Hughes, Judy Millar, John Pule, SKYCITY Auckland Community Trust, Webb’s Art and Auctioneers, Cochlear Ltd, Mazda Artworks, Artrite, Donovan Boyd Communications, Seven, Admission, Urban Gourmet, Tabletops, BJ Ball, Printco, Anna Miles, El Framo, Hamish Keith, Elena Keith, Becky Nunes, Patrick Reynolds, De Baynton, Marcel Tromp, Gow Langsford Gallery and Momentum Gallery.
