Woven with Magic: Chris Hope and Sea Like a Mirror
21 May
- by Rachel Hare
Dissonance. Storm. Palimpsest. Overlap. Distance. Unexpected. Emotive. Alien.
These eight words formed the essence of North Somerset-based composer Chris Hope’s initial brief for the score for White Horses, a 16mm film work created by Ivan Morison from the shared practice of Heather Peak and Ivan Morison. Ivan’s film is the centrepiece of Sea Like a Mirror, a major touring project visiting six lifeboat stations this summer to celebrate the bicentenary of the Royal National Lifeboat Association (RNLI). It will capture sea storms and sea stories, foregrounding the power of the ocean and the remarkable people who live and work by the waves.
Embracing the ‘beautiful unpredictability’ of the project, Chris translated Ivan’s eight words into a series of sound boards, musical scrapbooks with ideas for pitch, pace and tempo. As they shared ideas and preferences, Ivan and Chris gradually homed in on a score which intertwines strands of traditionally composed music with strands of ambient field-recording which are deliberately discordant and ‘glitched’. Chris explains that he records sounds from the coastline and then runs them through more tape recorders back in his studio: ‘all of a sudden you start to get these beautiful little distortions’. Even his four-year-old daughter has part of a hand in the orchestration, having inadvertently placed her finger on a tape loop and warped the sound in new and surprising ways. The raw integrity of the process will marry with the intentional authenticity and granularity of Ivan’s film which will be shot on 16 mm film, hand-processed, and then played on a vintage projector in a unique sculptural tent. As Chris observes, ‘sometimes introducing a little element of chaos that you have no control over like a four-year-old, or a tape, or a live musician, any of these things can often end up with something unexpected and hopefully beautiful’.
Chris’s artistic practice is shot through with his own love of the coast. Although originally from Birmingham, he moved to Clevedon twelve years ago and talks with passion about the seaside town: ‘It’s woven with pure, pure magic and I think a massive part of that is its sea. It’s otherworldly, in-between. You can see your thoughts on the horizon’.
Sea Like a Mirror will visit Weston from 5th–8th June 2025. White Horses will be presented alongside Promenade, a weekender event which explores place, environment and the natural world through multidisciplinary contemporary arts and socially engaged practice. The weekender will include five new early career micro-commissions for artists in the area, aged 18–30, as well as coastal poetry, live music, performance, and site-specific artworks along the promenade.
Sea Like a Mirror is a partnership project led by Cement Fields, with Art Gene, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, North East Lincolnshire Council & East Marsh United, and Super Culture. Supported with public funding from Arts Council England. With thanks to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). Presented in Gravesend with Estuary Festival.
For more on Chris’s work, please visit his website: www.chrishopecomposer.co.uk
Book a FREE screening of White Horses, 5-8 June at Marine Lake, here: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/superculture/sea-like-a-mirror-screening/e-jqklba
Main image shows Ivan Morison and Chris Hope at the White Horses opening at Whitstable. Photo credit Tom Carter