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Orchestra keeps in mime for Sam Taylor-Wood art
Ellen Widdup23.10.08
FORGET air guitar - this orchestra has taken musical imagination to a whole new level.
The 100 members of the BBC Concert Orchestra have been filmed miming the playing of their instruments by artist Sam Taylor-Wood.
The film, part of her new exhibition, shows the ensemble dressed in everyday clothes as they pick up imaginary violins, cellos and flutes for the special performance. It will form the central piece in the Yes I No event, which opens tomorrow at White Cube Mason's Yard, Mayfair.
A spokeswoman for the exhibition said the installation, called Sigh, would be broadcast on multiple screens.
"In a dark, rundown studio, the members of the orchestra sit in their everyday clothes," she said. "They start to play a piece of music, sawing and blowing the empty spaces where the instruments should be.
"Although the music is clear and audible, the absence of the instruments renders the sound oddly incorporeal. It's a private, ghostly performance." The music used as a backdrop is a specially-commissioned score by the Academy Award-winning composer Anne Dudley.
Yes I No also includes a series of photographs taken by Taylor-Wood to represent Emily Brontė's Wuthering Heights.
The exhibition widens to No 1 The Piazza, Covent Garden, with more photographs. The White Cube show runs until 29 November, The Piazza until 5 November.
