The Rooms rings with the sounds of award-winning artist Janet Cardiff�s Forty-Part Motet

On May 26, 2006, The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery opens the unique sound installation Janet Cardiff: Forty-Part Motet. Organized and circulated by the National Gallery of Canada, the exhibit has achieved international acclaim as it has toured North America and Europe.

Best known for her audio and film-based art works often executed in collaboration with her partner George Bures Miller, Canadian artist Janet Cardiff has created a 40-track sound installation that powerfully re-contextualizes one of the most famous Tudor compositions, a choral piece by sixteenth century Renaissance England composer Thomas Tallis. Tallis wrote Spem in Alium nunquam habui in 1575 to mark the fortieth birthday of Queen Elizabeth I - a choral work for 40 voices that is widely celebrated for its themes of transcendence and humility. Gallery director Shauna McCabe notes, "as it has toured the world, Cardiff�s work has been wonderfully popular as well as emotionally powerful."

Using Tallis� music as a starting point and working with the Salisbury Cathedral Choir, Cardiff replaces each singer with an audio speaker, with voices individually mastered and rendered with precise clarity. Each speaker stands at an average head height and is positioned in such a way that viewers can listen to different voices and experience different combinations as they progress through the work.

"Most people experience this piece now in their living room in front of only two speakers, the spatial construction is lost in the mix. Even in a live concert, the audience is separated from the individual voices. Only the performers are able to hear the person standing next to them singing a different harmony," says Ms. Cardiff. "I wanted to be able to ��climb inside� the music, connecting with separate voices. I am also interested in how sound may construct a space in a sculptural way and how the audience may choose a path through this physical yet virtual space."

Janet Cardiff: Forty-Part Motet was first presented at the National Gallery of Canada in 2001, winning The Millennium Prize, the first international prize in the visual arts to be created in Canada. It has since been shown in major art galleries including The Tate Modern in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Shauna McCabe, director, The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, believes this exhibition is going to be equally popular with the Newfoundland and Labrador community, "given the province�s vibrant cultural history and familiarity with sound performance as well as a long choral tradition."

Janet Cardiff: Forty-Part Motet is organized and circulated by the National Gallery of Canada, and will be presented on Level 4 at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery from May 26 through September 17, 2006.

For more information, please visit www.therooms.ca or contact (709) 757-8000.

Media contact: Deanne Hayward, (709) 757-8070, 691-5691

2006 05 25                                                4:55 p.m.