Tris Vonna-Michell
Sifting
10th June – 23rd July 2023

In 2021, a shipment of hundreds of boxes of materials, many of which contained seemingly incomplete and undefined works, arrived at Tris’ studio in Stockholm. It was sent from England after discovering that, unbeknownst to Tris, his father, Erik Vonna-Michell (1950–2020) had been producing artworks for several decades.

From this shipment there were dozens of boxes containing various large format camera components and hundreds of abstract large format photographs. The works were part of Erik Vonna-Michell’s archive from the publishing project Balsam Flex which Erik ran from London and later Essex from the late 1970s until the early 1990s.

The publications of Balsam Flex consisted mainly of experimental sound works. Recordings were often deliberately distorted and the phonetic aspects of speech were foregrounded, alongside which, spoken word narratives also became abstract. The recordings were often difficult to interpret to reflect the overall practice of experimental poetry and to reflect the artist’s interests in the abuse of technology. The recordings were published on audio cassettes and were produced and performed mostly by poets committed to straying across artistic disciplines. E.E Vonna-Michell and Allen Fisher’s Car Wash Interview (1978), in which Vonna-Michell and Fisher record an interview together whilst driving through a car-wash is a notable example.

The materials in the boxes revealed themes in Erik’s work present in Tris’ own. Employing such strategies of photographic contradiction and abstraction, the artists both share an intuitive approach to image making alongside a similar disregard and intrigue to the tools of image production. For Tris, this shipment of works led to an exploration into new working methodologies and notions of authorship centred around the theme of collaboration.

In 2022, Tris incorporated material from Erik’s work for the first time in his solo exhibition back segments in Brussels, dropping his first name for the show and exhibiting under the name Vonna-Michell. As Tris explains, “it made sense, on this occasion, to drop the first name and work under the auspices of a surname passed on and invented by Erik in 1972”. As part of back segments, Tris’ photo series Boxed Matter (2022), in which Tris assembled and photographed different combinations of these shipped materials, reflected this new phase of engaging directly, in a more tactile manner with Erik’s works. back segments both embraced and questioned notions of authorship to gain an understanding into Erik’s past activities.

Sifting marks a shift in Tris’ approach to questions of authorship. Exhibiting under the name Tris Vonna-Michell, Sifting continues the collaborative themes of back segments, presenting image compositions which capture the deliberate scatterings of archival misalignments found in the boxes. Tris’ compositions in this new series of photographic works, Collections & Collaborations (2023), embrace these misalignments, playing with the notion of physically sifting through the boxes of archival material to create these compositions. The arbitrary nature of sifting through archival material is informed by Erik’s own deliberate skewering of camera intentionality found on the amassment of slide film. Whilst back segments enabled Tris to incorporate Erik’s work alongside his own, the latent still life photographs in Collections & Collaborations (2023) speak of a slow process of learning how to speak as a pair, of conjuring an identity through this discovery and amassment of new material.

Sifting: TV Radio TV Radio Tuner Phono Phono Tape (2023) by Tris Vonna-Michell, playing alongside Collections & Collaborations (2023) continues the theme of collaboration. The film, shown in full for the first time, is a collaborative sound composition between Henning Lundkvist (b. 1981) and Tris Vonna-Michell in which the two are sifting through the audio archives and ephemera; to record, select, listen, discuss, edit and attempt to pry open some sense of orientation and meaning within the context of the shipment of boxes of materials. The film consists of a succession of images of the dispersed Balsam Flex audio archive overlaid with ephemera and newly discovered celluloid film strips. The image fidelity flutters between light refraction and shadow. The film is an insight into the seemingly endless act of sifting through decades of forgotten and concealed works. By connecting and placing this new body of work within the domestic space, Sifting embraces the experimental nature of Balsam Flex’s activity in London, reframing the project’s archival material whilst underlining Tris’ renewed approach to authorship.

Tris Vonna-Michell (b. 1982) works in various media utilising a plethora of technical devices, modes of presentation and installation approaches, encompassing performance, audio recordings, slide projections, poetry, sound poetry, printed matter, photography and film. Recent works can be found in numerous public collections such as Serralves Museum, Porto; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA); Centre National Des Arts Plastiques (CNAP), Paris; Tate Modern, London; and Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg. Vonna-Michell is based in Oslo and Stockholm.

Tris Vonna-Michell, Sifting: TV Radio TV Radio Tuner Phono Phono Tape, 2023, Digital video, 7 minutes 48 seconds, Unique + 1AP (stills)