Jennifer Wicks “Home Truths”
TX: Tuesday, 8th April – 6:00 – 6:45pm / Thursday, 10th April – 12:00 – 12:45pm BST
The work emerges as a collage of spectral remnants, weaving fragmented memories and sonic decay into a textured exploration of fragility and persistence. It navigates the temporal erosion of sound and memory, uncovering layers of meaning through glitch, plunderphonics, and drones.
Using obsolete media (minidisc’s / CD), loops, and layered field recordings, Home Truths incorporates re-recorded WhatsApp voice messages—modern-day answer machine fragments degraded through repeated transfers onto minidisc. In some instances, these recordings underwent extensive processing, including guitar pedals and vocoders, to craft the central sonic textures and motifs. Traditional musical elements—electric piano, guitars – were layered around this degraded archive of sound, creating harmonic interplay with the spectral echoes of friends, family and found radio recordings from the early 2000’s on minidisc. Special thanks to artist and friend Bel Gilbert Scott.
JW: acoustic & electric guitars, mini-disc players, CD players, electronics, field recordings, contact mics and objects.
Home Truths
- State of the world 07:08
- JGo. Never. Go. 04:32
- Weirdest Dreams 04:00
- Broken sound machine 04:17
- Love 01:15
- Ice Fishing 11:16
- Ahhahhahh 04:48
Jennifer Wicks is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans durational installations, audiovisual performances, sound art releases, and creative-critical writing. Her work interrogates memory, language, and states of being through experimental methods, emphasising light, time, and sound. Employing obsolete media, 16mm film, reappropriated materials, and custom light-to-sound instruments, she explores the materiality of sound and image. Using Media Archaeology and contemporary technologies, she treats them both as subjects of inquiry and as tools to critique the dominance of digital culture in shaping memory, perception, and our relationship with time.
Her solo live performances explore temporal dynamics, chance, and the mechanics of sound. Working at the intersection of industrial noise, sample culture, cut-up techniques, and expanded cinema, she addresses the limitations and possibilities of analogue film and sound systems. Using modified 16mm projectors, contact microphones, and multiple guitar effects pedals, she crafts immersive, textured, and dissonant audiovisual installations.
She has training in conventional music and holds an MLitt in Fine Art Practice (Glasgow School of Art) and an MSc in Sound Design and Audio-Visual Practice (University of Glasgow). She has received a Leverhulme-funded artist residency at Glasgow University (2011-2012) and was Artist in Residence at the University of Stirling (2022), working with the Norman McLaren archive. Her recent projects span international exhibitions and festivals. She makes music with WOMEN’S HOUR (Wicks and Contort Yourself head honcho Murray CY). LP released on L.I.E.S. Records, December 2023.
