Viewing The Soothsayer’s Chorus

The art of the chorus.

Cassandra finally gets a chorus in Islington this October. Co-curated by Beth Greenacre and Bettina Prentice, ‘The Soothsayer’s Chorus’ brings together 16 women artists around the Trojan prophetess who could see what was coming but was condemned never to be believed, with Ana Mendieta, Judy Chicago, Katie Paterson, Cecilia Vicuña and Veronica Ryan among those taking part.

The setting carries its own history of sound: Pink Floyd established Britannia Row Studios in 1975, using the Islington space to record ‘Animals’ and ‘The Wall’. Now, Cecilia Vicuña’s ‘Kuntur Ko’ fills the former studio with chants and poems first created in response to disappearing glaciers in Chile, while Davina Semo’s bronze bells can be rung by visitors.

Elsewhere, Katie Paterson turns deep time into an hourglass containing crushed asteroid, lunar and pre-solar material. Judy Chicago’s ‘Immolation’, meanwhile, emerges from a haze of smoke, while two photographs by Ana Mendieta trace female forms into sand. Virginia Overton will transform a UK-sourced pickup truck into an aquatic garden and Jewel contributes a new stainless-steel sculpture drawing on pre-Christian matriarchal myth.

Cassandra is no longer left speaking alone. Come to Britannia Row and have a listen.