In October 2021, the Newlyn Society of Artists celebrated its 125th anniversary with a landmark exhibition at Tremenheere Gallery. The brief for the show was simple: draw inspiration from our prestigious history and create something new.
I explored the work of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912–2004), who joined the NSA in 1942.
Let It Rip is an interactive sound and video installation inspired by her late 1990s screen print series, Lemon and Oranges Playing Games. It was shown at Past Present Future – NSA 125, in 2021.
Viewers trigger the work by clapping or making vocal sounds, causing dynamic visual projections to appear—never the same twice, always unfolding in unexpected ways.
The title comes from an expression Barns-Graham often used in her later years:
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham CBE,
British 1912-2004,
Orange and Lemon Playing Games 1, 1999
“Let it rip, let it go.”
Her urgency to create in the last decade of her life was remarkable. Let It Rip embraces that spirit—a game of accidental events with a sense of urgency.
Video and Sound Installation Still
Each handclap or sudden sound alters the projected imagery in real time, never repeating itself. The shifting forms and relationships between colours mimic her approach to composition, and in transition, a small melody plays—the closest I could get to making colour sing, something Barns-Graham always aspired to.
To achieve this, I used Max/MSP, an audiovisual programming software that enables randomness to drive the ever-changing images. Through custom-built algorithms, the software ensures that no two visual sequences are ever the same, echoing Barns-Graham’s exploration of order, chance, and movement in her work.
In 2012, filmmaker Tim Fitzpatrick worked with the Barns-Graham Charitable Trust’s collection and archive. His film, Looking In, Looking Out, features a conversation between biographer Lynne Green and curator Dr. Helen Scott. Green describes how Barns-Graham’s work balanced order and disorder through an invisible mathematical framework—mirroring the unpredictability of life. She even introduced randomness into her process, arranging small painted squares on the ground before kicking them into a new composition.
Barns-Graham took great joy in seeing people engage with her work, especially young audiences. Watching the excitement and curiosity of those interacting with Let It Rip, I’d like to think this installation would have brought a smile to her face.