JOHN WYNNE
Sound artist, John Wynne, has a PhD from Goldsmiths College, University of London. His award-winning work, which is often research-led, is made for museums, galleries, and public spaces, as well as for radio – ranging from massive installations to delicate sculptural works and from architectural sound drawings to flying radios. Long-term research projects have included working with speakers of endangered languages of Africa and Canada and with heart and lung transplant patients in the UK. For three years, he had his own programme called Upcountry on ResonanceFM in London, where according to Ed Baxter, Wynne “invited Tammy Wynette [American country music singer] to have tea with Pierre Henry [French composer, most famous for being a pioneer of musique concrete genre of electronic music] – in a thunderstorm”.
John Wynne’s stunning installation for 300 speakers, Pianola and vacuum cleaner was one of the outstanding works in the Saatchi gallery’s 2010 survey of new British art, ‘Newspeak’. The first piece of sound art in Saatchi’s collection, this work of “frail monumentalism” (Charles Darwent) united critics as disparate as Adrian Searle and Brian Sewell in its praise. John’s disparate practice includes a project based on highly endangered click-languages in the Kalahari Desert and another with heart and lung transplant patients in the UK. Brandon Labelle writes that the piece “creates a soft balance between order and chaos, organization [sic] and its rupture”.
His work with alarm sounds of his own design includes a work banned by the City Council of Copenhagen for allegedly “frightening and confusing the public” and another described as “an ambient, ghost-like presence”. John’s award-winning work has been exhibited and broadcast widely around the world.
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