Anna McNay

Review of Sonia Boyce: Feeling Her Way at Turner Contemporary, Margate

21/03/23

Sonia Boyce: Feeling Her Way

Turner Contemporary, Margate
4 February – 8 May 2023

“There’s a part of me that enjoys making noise,” says Sonia Boyce (b1962, London), and, certainly, on entering the first room of the artist’s five-room “immersive installation”, Feeling Her Way, at Turner Contemporary, noise is what greets me. Noise and colour, both in riotous form. But once my eyes and ears begin to acclimatise, I start to pick out the nuances, the different strains of sound and colour, the individual voices and motifs. The exhibition’s curator, Emma Ridgway, from the British Council, describes it as “an expanded collage, a layering of tessellating wallpapers of clashing colours, golden geometric structures replicating pyrite, and monochrome moving-image works, which immerse the space in the emotive sound of women singing.”1 This is the first iteration in the exhibition’s tour – further venues include Leeds Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art – following its winning the Golden Lion for best national participation, in the British Pavilion, at the 59th Venice Biennale last year. Throughout my visit, there is a steady footfall of all ages.

Read the full review here