In The Open | Barry Snaith & Eirini Boukla

Barry Snaith throughout his carrier has worked/collaborated with numerous international artists and engaged in various creative genres - music, painting, surrealist human art, motion graphics, dance and video. As a guitarist, he has toured, gigged and recorded with the likes of The Ramones, Chrissie Hynde, Johnny Thunders, and David Johannsen (New York Dolls). As a solo artist, he writes and produces soundscapes that have been used in fashion catwalk shows, the UK’s first ever digital fiction installation, ‘Wallpaper’ which was curated at Bank Street Arts in August 2015. He is currently working on the soundscape of the Virtual Reality version to be released worldwide at the end of 2017 with the award winning Dreaming Methods/One To One Development Trust. He has produced and composed with Tayo Irvine Hendrix for The Tate Modern, and this will be performed for Nelson Mandela’s 100th birthday event on Robben Island 8 July, 2018. His music is to be visualised by the motion graphic internationally acclaimed George Redhawk (Paramount Movies ‘Ghost in The Shell’) and the track art for his electronic duo ‘How I Wrote Elastic Man’, is by the French artist Eric Lacombe. The video single for his ‘Bold Ego Fledgling’, was choreographed by Parris Goebel and performed with her ‘ReQuest Dance Crew’. He has recently launched ‘Mau’, a gothic electronica collaboration with Greek based songstress Erika Bach. He currently resides in Wakefield UK".

Eirini Boukla is an artist and a lecturer in Art and Design. She makes use of a variety of mediums, that often merge, to explore the possibilities of contemporary drawing practice and ideas of authenticity and originality. Her main research interests are drawing, collage, the practice of tracing, ideas of authenticity and semiotics. She has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include; Drawing Dialogue, DalgaArt, Craiova, Romania. Pushpin, Zverev Museum, Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow. Ink Shop Printmaking Center & Olive Branch Press. Ithaca, New York. USA. Limerick/Berlin, Limerick printmakers gallery, Ireland. Pieces of Eight, PSL, Leeds; Thinking tools, FAFA Gallery, Helsinki, Finland; Drawing Connections, Siena Art Institute, Siena, Italy; The Artful Scriptorium, Climate Gallery, New York, USA. 8th International exhibition of women painters, Majdanpek Cultural Center, Serbia. The Last Book (Luis Camnitzer project), Zentral Bibliothek in Zurich, Switzerland. Adaptive Actions, Campo AA, Madrid Abierto, Madrid, Spain. Contemporary Flânerie: Reconfiguring Cities, Oakland University Art Gallery, Rochester, Michigan, USA. The Last Book (Luis Camnitzer project), National Library of Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina. SIPF, Singapore International Photography Festival, Singapore. Civic Hall Brno, Brno, Czech Republic. Lattidute, Fifty Four Degrees North Festival, Hull, England. Olympolis, Katerini, Greece. Public Screen, SYNCH Festival, Technopolis, Athens, Greece.

Bal Na Vodi (Dancing in Water) is a 2 minutes and 36 seconds audio visual drawing. Is the outcome of a collaborative dialogue between artist Eirini Boukla and musician Barry Snaith. The work is a de/constructive, systematic approach to moving image, through a linear and atmospheric narrative detour.
Eirini uses tracing as a particular form of drawing that reworks and repurposes the found and already worked material. Taking up the diagrammatic potential of the moving image ‘Bal na vodi’ edits, traces over, and reworks the motion lines from ‘Jolly Fish’ a 1932 Van Beuren studio hand-drawn animation, ‘a tracing’ that speculates on possibilities of place and memory and their representation, through dynamic behaviour and movement and other core elements of embodied experience.

Barry's soundtrack, accompanying Bal Na Vodi’s graphic dialogue and emphasises the drama, rhythm, tempo, mood or continuity in and between the images. Usefully and crucially creates space outside the frame. Sometimes we are aware of the soundtrack, especially if a melody is recognised, but more often it slips into our subconscious as perhaps it should if it is going there to retrieve a memory.