HEIRLOOM presents this spring’s solo exhibition, every time I've been an eclipse by London-based artist Frances Scott.

every time I’ve been an eclipse is a constellation of works in response to Wendy Carlos (b. 1939) – a homage from one artist to another – and is based on Scott's years-long study of and fascination with the American composer and musician. Wendy Carlos is a pioneer in the development of electronic music and is particularly known for her experimental use of the vocoder (synthesizer and voice effect) in her compositions, including her scores for Stanley Kubrick's films A Clockwork Orange and The Shining.

Wendy Carlos’ oeuvre has a multi-disciplinary expression, rooted in her identities in music, as well as her passions for astronomy and photography, producing images of solar eclipses that would later be used by the American space agency NASA. The exhibition features a large installation and a series of moving image works that orbit around Carlos and convey Scott’s respectful approach to another artist, whose full complexity has often been limited by narrow perceptions in the public domain.

In a 1979 interview with Playboy magazine, Carlos made her transition public, and was one of the first cultural figures to do so. The news became the focus of the interview, and Carlos subsequently felt disappointed by the fact that her artistic work did not feature more prominently in the article. Carlos has lived in New York since the late '70s, largely keeping out of the public eye.  

During her research in the archives of the New York Public Library, Frances Scott discovered the transcription of the Playboy interview. Scott has drawn on several of Carlos’ original statements which were omitted from the article, and she thereby paints a much broader picture of Carlos’ interests and praxis. The exhibition’s title every time I've been an eclipse is a typo from the transcription of the taped conversation and should have read ‘every time I’ve seen an eclipse’. In this sense Carlos becomes the celestial event. Her interest in the fleeting moment of the solar eclipse – the phenomenon where the moon appears to overshadow the sun – becomes for Scott an illustration of the movements that constantly recur in life, with elements blocking and eclipsing each other, without those processes being visible or experienced in the same way by everyone involved.

The exhibition features the film installation Wendy (2023), which was created together with filmmaker and sound designer Chu-Li Shewring. The work is the culmination of Scott’s research on Carlos and a synthesis of connected interests. Wendy was originally commissioned for the exhibition venue TACO! in Thamesmead, London, where scenes from A Clockwork Orange were shot. The area’s wild horses and brutalist architecture are referenced in the film and installation. Within the work’s abstract imagery, Scott and Shewring also feature in their joint attempt to teach themselves Carlos’ composition ‘Timesteps’.

Two other film vignettes are on display in the exhibition: Valentina (2020), where dancer Valentina Formenti narrates distinct elements from the Playboy interview, improvised from memory of the script; the second work, Aureole (2021), is a film collage of planetary phenomena. In addition, the exhibition presents material Scott collected during her research, as well as hand-drawn scores made with musician Tom Richards.

The exhibition at HEIRLOOM depicts the complex and unpredictable journey an artistic archive-based project can take. The ambition for Scott was never to achieve a defining representation of Wendy Carlos. Rather, the question might be who is actually represented through such an investigation? A large part of Scott’s project took place during the COVID-pandemic. Due to travel restrictions, much of the initial research was conducted online, with several recordings made remotely. While the exhibition is a poetic tribute to Wendy Carlos, it also draws a portrait of Scott’s working method as an artist in her own right.

Special thanks to: Chu-Li Shewring, Mat Jenner and TACO!, Tom Richards, David Tompkins, LUX, Robin Kirkham and An Endless Supply, Rasmus Brendstrup and Cinemateket, Christopher McSherry.

Frances Scott’s films are distributed by LUX. 

The exhibition is supported by The New Carlsberg Foundation, The Augustinus Foundation and The Beckett Foundation. Wendy was commissioned by TACO! and supported by Arts Council England and the Elephant Trust.

Frances Scott (b. 1981, Barrow-in-Furness, UK) is a London-based artist working with the moving image. Her work considers the narratives and histories at the periphery of cinematic production and its apparatus, to produce films composed of their metonymic fragments. Her projects are often made in exchange with other specialists, groups and publics, and developed through research using online and physical archives. She associates and composites diverse materials, analogue and digital film media, to create intricate scenarios that are both scripted and improvised. Her film work, informed by this collaborative and research-led process, takes multiple forms.