Lachrymae

Interview with

Alastair Goolden and Helen Ottaway

Lachrymae is a collaborative installation in glass and sound created by sculptor Rowena Pearce, artist Tim Millar, composer Helen Ottaway and sound designer Alastair Goolden. Suspended glass forms, lit and arranged in space, are paired with finely tuned “sound beams” so that visitors activate and encounter fragments of music, voice and environmental sound as they move. Inspired by Ovid and Ted Hughes’ stories of transformation—girls into trees, tears into amber—the work turns the gallery or woodland into a kind of echo chamber, where light, glass and directed sound mingle to produce an intimate, shifting experience of grief, memory and renewal.

Flowing tears quenching the burnt earth as Phaeton’s sisters mourn their brother after his terrible and destructive fall – this is the main inspirational image for Lachrymae (Latin: tears). Phaeton’s sisters are turned to trees and their tears, transformed to amber in the heat of the sun, are carried away by the river to become adornments for Roman brides. Thus something of beauty is created and the sadness transcended. Transformation and the emergence of life from water are common themes in the work of Rowena Pearce and Helen Ottaway. Through this story these themes are drawn together, making tears and laments, blending and merging the visual and aural into a single experience. Lachrymae is an exploration of music and visual art through movement.

List of exhibitions:

On 19 May Artmusic created their installation Lachrymae in Wandsworth Park’s beautiful Avenue of Trees, as part of Wandsworth Arts Festival’s The Shimmy.

Moors Valley, Sept 2023 Take a walk through the woods, chance upon interweaving fragments of music and teardrop sculpture.