| Dates: | 16/08/17 – 26/11/17 |
| Times: | Mon – Sat: 07:15 – sunset Sun: 08:00 – sunset |
| Venue: | Horniman Museum and Gardens, 100 London Road, Forest Hill, London, SE23 3PQ |
Delfina Foundation is delighted to announce an installation by Turkish artist Ali Miharbi for the Horniman Gardens in South London. The work, co-commissioned by Delfina Foundation and Horniman Museum with support from SAHA, is inspired by the museum’s musical instrument collection which Ali visited during his residency in Winter 2017. The collection is one of the most comprehensive in the UK with over 8,000 objects made to produce sound and instrument makers and collectors archives.
One of a series of works related to the air and the voice that Ali Miharbi has developed, the wind organ is an aeolian instrument that brings together nature, musical sound and human vocal range. Five 3 metre poles are installed in a higher part of the garden. Each of the tubes is shaped after acoustic filters that produce vowel-like sounds when used in combination with a reed. Here, instead of a reed, a kind of whistle is used as the sound source (a pipe with a slit), which is played by the wind and creates a more flute-like sound where the different vowel filters create different timbres. The corresponding vowels are A,E,I,O and U. The instrument is inspired by bamboo kite flutes/whistles, as well as aeolian bamboo-organs and wind organs from South-East Asia and the Pacific.
Sound recordings of the work and a short film about its development are installed in the musical instrument gallery where it temporarily joins the collection.
The installation forms part of a series of works commissioned as part of Delfina Foundation’s thematic programme Collecting as Practice.
Co-commissioned by
Delfina Foundation and Horniman Museum
With support from
Further Reading
Read an interview with the artist about the work.