The Silence of Sound

Maria Pierides 

 

5th - 26th November

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I am walking up the Elidir Trail towards the waterfalls.

It is a rainy day, a sunny day, fog billows between trees, sunlight bumps along the water surface, breaking into slivers of sparkling light. It is cold, it is damp, it is warm, humid. It is any day of the year. I’ve been walking along this trail for inspiration, for exercise, for meditation.

 

What I have found is priceless. A world forever renewing itself, showing itself to me in infinite varieties of sound, and its absence, of colour, smell, texture. Fairy tales from around the world seem to have found in this woodland a perfect setting: Hansel and Gretel skipping stones here; the Queen of the Dell sets her throne over there. Melodies mingle with trickling water. Menace, dressed in bare branches, reaches towards the trail. The gargle of water, rolling down the valley, amplified, blasts my ears. Then, in a bend of the path, silence. The total absence of sound.

 

Here castles emerge from elaborate shapes of fungi. I smell moss, damp, the earth.  This world glistens, listens, speaks in the language of the senses, in the pulse and rhythm of primeval mindscapes we all share.

 

I hear my steps on the squelchy ground, on wet stones, on rough grass. This exhibition is my invitation to you to walk with me, to share my response to the

mystery and exquisite beauty of this world, and to explore and recover your own.

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