GUT FEELINGS
FIRST EDITION
EXHIBITED AT THE OLD WAITING ROOM
Gut Feelings is the conceptual vehicle and touring exhibition of the imagination of Anna Burns. The first iteration of the project was shared with the public in June 2024 as a sculptural installation, photo book, vinyl record with litho print gatefold cover and a series of paintings. The exhibition is intended to adapt and respond to different exhibition spaces, creating a site specific and unique multi media incarnation wherever it is displayed. The multiple layers in the project reflects the diverse ways in which Anna thinks and works, alongside her ability to transpose themes across different materials, narratives and formats while maintaining a coherent conceptual message. Anna is currently exploring further iterations of the project.
Anna Burns’ installation, GUT FEELINGS, is a questioning of human intuition’s role in the current age of algorithmic monotony. While push notifications press us to chug along in endless machine suggested rhythms, Burns urges us to pay attention to our gut - encouraging us all to allow the analogue sound, vibrant colours, ritualistic iconography and literal spilling of guts to physically move us through a speculative, ritual space of the future, as she imagines it.
Using analogue elements as modern relics, GUT FEELINGS creates the superstitions of talisman or votive, alongside pop iconism of Janice the Muppet bassist. The guts themselves are colour coded, each colour a nod to frequencies and emotions that plead to become a united energy; like the synchronised heart rate of a choir when singing as one entity. Referencing both ancient and modern uses of repetitive sound as a ritual carrier, a pair of custom made vinyl records kiss endlessly during the exhibition. 7 locked groove sounds repeat to form the new-wave healing chant that plays as the two heads cut into the vinyls meet each other’s lips, over and over.
PHOTOBOOTH SESSIONS
Photobooth Sessions is a limited first edition photographic book, featuring the 13 dolls celebrating their life outside of the commune. Through the PhotoBooth the dolls are given agency to generate and control how they are portrayed. This autonomy is the opposite of objectification. Reversal of the modern selfie. Return to the elemental self. The dolls are humanised. Just as our contemporary digital universe renders humans into dolls. Designed by Marie Lan and Jon Butterworth, and shot by Burns over the course of one year in an analogue photobooth, the limited first edition book of 500 includes a poem, ‘GUT FEELINGS’, by writer Jess Cole in direct response to the installation.
SEVEN KISSES - VINYL AND MULTI-GATEFOLD RECORD SLEEVE
Seven Kisses, a limited edition of 90 shaped Vinyls of the exhibition’s 7 ritualistic and rhythmic locked groove kissing sounds. Wrapped in multi-gatefold sleeves, Litho offset printed on Arena Natural Rough and unfolding to 1.5m. The use of analogue methods create its own challenges - over 18 months Burns worked closely with the vinyl manufacturer to ensure the sounds were produced at the correct moment as the record turned and lips of the record met each other …. this was all done by eye and hand, representing a return to the physical cycle of making. The inverse of the digital age. The record plays 7 different kissing sounds … repeating them as the needle stays in one chosen groove. Sound as repetition. A modern chant from the commune.
The locked groove shaped vinyls are pressed by Breed Media and the printing by Calverts London they are artwork in themselves. Sound Collaboration with Ferdinand Gratz.
