A Shell of Sound
at Cooke's Studios with Artist Lab group exhibition, Barrow in Furness, 2025.
Narrative and sound collaboration with Mel Galley.
Mel Galley and Núria Rovira Terradas, collaborating to imagine a bridge across the bay linking Barrow and Morecambe; a presence existing in promises and plans, a line of connection through - and to - places. Weaving a narrative installation from sculpture, sound, stories and light, we’re invited to sit in this speculative world which asks; how do we listen to landscapes?
“Translucent paper sweeps across the gallery floor, and this becomes the bay…On an adjacent table, tiny speakers in whelk shells play underwater sounds – knocking boats, the rush of current – while a stack of story cards assembles the moments and childhood misremembrances of a life lived on the bay. With each thought presented on its own card, the narrative becomes indexed, a catalogue of loss and possibility, love and grief.” – review by Simon Sylvester, Corridor 8
Sound Walk at Foulney Island 31/01/2026. Photographs by Giles Bennett.
On the last day of January, we gathered by the edge of the Bay to walk and listen together.
Each participant was wearing headphones that activated sound fragments based on their location, unraveling a story through their steps. Voices carried memories shaped by the Bay: its shifting tides, its curved shoreline, its whispering shells.
We walked toward an imagined bridge—a straight line stretching between Heysham and Barrow. An architectural ghost that has lingered here for years. Looking out across the water through binoculars, we searched for blue—what Rebecca Solnit calls “the blue of distance”—and asked: how can we feel distance without the urge to close it?