Vessel / Lucy Railton

'I often feel the presence of a madness close by; the few degrees between control and collapse compel and terrify me; like standing on a ledge in a hot wind; performing a distorted character, the world never quite coming into focus; gritted teeth; I have a need for the strange, to feel estranged from myself, to get lost; to stop; to become still and uninterested and alive'.

Broadly inspired by the Clarice Lispector's 'The Passion According to G.H' and recorded in the reverberant surroundings of Somerset House's Rifle Range - a disused chamber once used for naval shooting practice - Seb Gainsborough (AKA Vessel) presents a new piece for voices, percussion and electronics. In collaboration with a range of vocalists, the piece aims to be a brief moment of insanity.

"But if I screamed even once, I might never be able to stop. If I screamed nobody could ever help me again; whereas, If I never revealed my neediness, I wouldn't scare anybody; but only if I didn't scare anybody by venturing outside of the rules."

Commissioned by Somerset House Studios, composer and cellist Lucy Railton presents an extended set of original music drawing on her recent debut album Paradise 94 (Modern Love) alongside a new work in collaboration with artist and Savage Messiah author, Laura Grace Ford.

For ASSEMBLY, Railton's new live audio work responds to the complex and palimpsestic character of Thames-side Wapping, treating river systems as both a literal and metaphorical manifestation of connectivity, she constructs a sound world of undercurrents that relate people, places and time. 

Railton gathers these notions into a new work featuring text by Laura Grace Ford generated from psychogeographic drifts around Wapping and Limehouse . Tuning into the emotional contours of place the artists respond to residual currents of marginalised and occuluded cultures, the spectres of militancy and the emancipatory possibilities arising from proximity to a powerful and sacred river.