Andrew Dodds: All Things, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art

Andrew Dodds

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	All Things Sound installation: speakers, amplifier, player, edited recordings of North East Youth Choir
	Commissioned by BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art for 'A Duck for Mr Darwin', a group exhibition by nine international artists including Mark Dion, Dorothy Cross, Tania Kovats and Charles Avery. ‘All Things’ responds to the recent history of the North East’s education system, in particular the sponsorship of the UK’s first ‘Creationist Academy’ in Gateshead by the Vardy Foundation. The North East Youth Choir were recorded performing a 'restored' version of the 19th century hymn, 'All Things Bright and Beautiful' written by Cecil Frances Alexander. The hymn portrays a sense of wonder and celebration of the natural world however, through our contemporary sensibilities it can also be understood as dealing with issues of class, a belief in human dominion over nature and a sense of entitlement. By re-inserting a verse which has fallen from favour and no longer sung because it alludes to the British class system, our attention is drawn to the cultural construction of ‘nature’ and religious belief systems, and to a celebration of the individual voice over the institutional.

	Greeting us at the event is a choir of little girls eerily singing All Things Bright and Beautiful, in a disembodied sound piece by Andrew Dodds that seems to haunt you wherever you are in the room. The caption informs us that Britain’s first creationist academy has opened in Gateshead. But Dodds is surely not trying to placate the local flat-earthers with this tribute to God’s creatures great and small. Neither is he deliberately seeking to annoy them. Instead, the ethereal voices of the singing kids have a persuasive sweetness to them that successfully fills the show with doubts. Waldemar Januszczak, review of 'A Duck for Mr Darwin', The Sunday Times, Culture, 26 April 2009