Some Misunderstanding [on Mondegreens and Pareidolias] – Castlefield Gallery

Cory Arcangel, Anton Bruhin, Jenny Core, Dina Danish, Denicolai & Provoost, Maya Erdelyi, Dave Evans and Ben Gwilliam.

Curated by Sevie Tsampalla

Mondegreens are mishearings of words or phrases, which in turn acquire new meanings. Pareidolias are randomly occurring shapes, forms or sounds experienced as significant by individuals or groups. Drawing on examples such as misheard song lyrics or sightings of religious figures in banal objects, this exhibition explores how misunderstandings can lead to everything from amusing mistakes to amplified experiences of the world.

Some Misunderstanding brings together eight artists from across Europe, the U.S. and the North West of England. Dina Danish performs her own mondegreen as she strains to lip-sync to Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ under water. Anton Bruhin organises the Swiss-German dialect in order of near-homophones, problematising the task of differentiation for the listener. Ben Gwilliam’s installation wäil, a play on the words veil and wail, shimmers and whispers with unheard sound when disturbed by the viewer. Cory Arcangel compresses Iron Maiden’s song ‘The Number of the Beast’ 666 times, referring to its history as a source of subliminal messages, and ‘corrects’ Jimi Hendrix’s performance of the Star Spangled Banner using Apple’s auto-tune software. Inspired by sci-fi film sets, Dave Evans’ Paper Mountains indulge our ability to suspend disbelief. Jenny Core’s drawings encourage our inclination to recognise familiar patterns in abstract images. Maya Erdelyi constructs meaning by reorganising her own random thoughts, family histories and dreams, whilst Denicolai & Provoost expose the blurred lines between subjective experience and objective reality, between seeing and believing.