St Mary’s Church, Hay-on-Wye, HR3 5EB. Doors open 5.45pm. Bar.
Introduction by artist Caroline Burraway and members of the quartet of Charlotte Bray's composition ‘Ungrievable Lives’.
“An ungrievable life is one that cannot be mourned because it has never lived, that is, it has never counted as a life at all.”
Composer Charlotte Bray’s string quartet took its inspiration from the emotive installation of the same name, created by artist Caroline Burraway and on view in Hay Castle throughout September.
Tickets: included in concert ticket at £20 / £10 under 25s
UNGRIEVABLE LIVES, 13 children’s dresses handmade from lifejackets the artist gathered from the Lifejacket Graveyard, Lesvos. Each dress represents one of the 13 million child refugees worldwide. Today as a consequence of the war in Ukraine, this number is now 15 million
The dresses signify the absent body, evoking memory, absence and loss. Dirty, torn, patched together, a mixture of faded oranges, pinks and reds, at first glance they look like any small 3/4 year old dress a young child may wear, your child, my child, any child…
The scales, an ancient symbol of justice, signify the weighing of the body and soul, embodying the difficult question: “What is the differential value of a Western life compared to the value of the life of the refugee, arriving at the border of the Western world?”
The piles of sand at the bottom of each dress represent physical/ real, political/ fictional, and cultural/ symbolic borders and - like sands - are forever shifting and changing over time. Man-made boundaries, including linguistic, economic and social, conspire to create further division. Yet the movement of people has been constant throughout history. Migrants, refugees, the displaced and stateless, continue to make up an increasing number of the world population and the symbolic boundaries of identity and culture which make nations, the segmentation between “us” and “them” which is so apparent today will, over time, become redrawn as new forms of cultural diversity are introduced.
Bray, inspired by Burraway’s art installation Ungrievable Lives, has responded to the migrant crisis with her very first string quartet - performed by the Castalian String Quartet, together they toured to venues across Europe over the course of 2022-2024, including Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Wigmore Hall London, Wiener Konzerthaus, Kuhmo Festival Finland, Sante Fe, Oxford University Faculty of Music, National Concert Hall, Dublin, Concertgebouw Brugge and Berlin Konzerthaus
Award-winning British contemporary artist CAROLINE BURRAWAY studied BA (Hons) Drawing at Camberwell College of Arts and MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins. She has exhibited in numerous group and solo exhibitions in museums and galleries in the UK and internationally and has been nominated and won several awards including First Prize of the prestigious TBW Drawing Prize (formerly Jerwood) 2018. Her work has featured in art journals and magazines, including The Times and The Guardian, and is held in museums and private collections.
Burraway’s body of work confronts socio-political conflicts and cultural ruptures between and within communities, engaging the viewer in conversation around these issues. Concerned with underlying social structures and the everyday lived experience of the displaced and disenfranchised, she explores the interplay between the banality of the everyday and the political conditions of their precarious existence.
Burraway has been responding to the refugee crisis since 2015, filming and collecting research materials in refugee camps across Europe which she uses for installations, video, soundscape and drawings. This project, supported by UNHCR, seeks to raise awareness and to provoke a humanitarian response to the twin issues of displacement and dispossession, while questioning the differential values placed on a Western life and the life of the refugee arriving at the borders of Europe.
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British composer CHARLOTTE BRAY is one of the most esteemed and in-demand composers of her generation. Exhibiting uninhibited ambition and desire to communicate, her music is exhilarating, inherently vivid, and richly expressive with lyrical intensity. Championed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Aurora Orchestra, London Sinfonietta and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, her music has been performed at festivals in Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, Tanglewood, Aix-en-Provence, Verbier and Kuhmo, and with renowned conductors including Marin Alsop, Sir Mark Elder, Sakari Oramo, Oliver Knussen, Jessica Cottis, Daniel Harding, Duncan Ward and Karina Canellakis.
L’Orchestre de Chambre de Genève named Bray as composer-in-residence 2023-2026 and will perform several of her works over the 3 years. She visited Kuhmo International Chamber Music Festival and Spannungen Festival as composer-in-residence (2023). In 2019 Bray was awarded an Ivor Novello Award for Invisible Cities. Winner of the Lili Boulanger Prize (2014), Critics’ Circle Award for Exceptional Young Talent (2014), Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize (2010), At the Speed of Stillness featured in the ISCM World Music Days Festival 2017 in Vancouver. Bray was selected as a MacDowell Norton Stevens Fellow (2015-16) and interviewed as part of BBC Radio 3’s Composers’ Room series 2015. She is an Honorary Member of Birmingham Conservatoire, named as their Alumni of the Year 2014 (Excellence in Sport or the Arts), and also listed in The Evening Standard’s Most Influential Londoners (2011). Composer-in-Residence with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group/Sound and Music (2009/10), Oxford Lieder Festival (2011) and Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival (2015), her residencies include MacDowell (2013, 2015), Liguria Study Centre Bogliasco (2013), and Aldeburgh Music (2010, 2015).
Portrait discs of Bray’s music have been recorded on RTF Classical (2018) and NMC Records (2014). Her work also features on several discs including Tecchlers Cello by Guy Johnston (Kings College Cambridge 2017), Oberon Celebrates Shakespeare by the Oberon Trio (Avi-music and SWR 2016) and Upheld by Stillness by the choral ensemble Ora (Harmonia Mundi, released February 2016).
Originally from High Wycombe, Bray (b.1982) graduated from Birmingham Conservatoire with First Class Honours, having studied composition with Joe Cutler, and then completed a Masters in Composition with Distinction from the Royal College of Music in London studying with Mark-Anthony Turnage. She went on to participate in the Britten-Pears Contemporary Composition Course with Oliver Knussen, Colin Matthews and Magnus Lindberg and studied at Tanglewood Music Centre with John Harbison, Michael Gandolfi, Shulamit Ran and Augusta Read-Thomas. Her music is published by Birdsong. She lives in Berlin.