A Procession of Ghosts (2000) – Max Eastley

Sound sculpture
Steel cable, steel spring, engines, electronics, paper
Max Eastley

Max Eastley

born 1944 in Torquay (UK), lives in London (UK)

Since the late 1960s Artist and musician Max Eastley has explored the relationships between music, art, nature and chance. With a unique body of work, incorporating kinetic sculptures, music and environmental forces such as wind and water, Eastley has continually investigated the interplay between these seemingly disparate elements.

“The steel wire figures in the installation were set up in my studio one night and I went to sleep in the next room and left them to run during the night. Some time later I gradually woke from a dream of a spirit medium at a Séance using a Planchette, a small device with wheels and a pencil moved by the medium’s hand over paper to write messages from spirits. The movements of the mediums hand and the silent pencil moving over the paper was slowly replaced by the sound of the steel moving over the paper in the next room. Silence is a state of no consciousness, if we perceive, we are alive, however minute the event. Perhaps this is why I strive to find meaning especially through sound and movement that operate on the threshold of perception, an elusive dream like world which for me is the most vital and closest to the state of life itself.” (Max Eastley)

The work exhibited here is a variation on Eastley’s installation Ten Men, presented at Het Apollohuis in 1984, which also featured motor-driven wires scratching paper.