Exhibitions

Gareth Fry is a multi award winning sound designer, best known for his cutting-edge work in theatre, on productions such as Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and Complicité’s The Encounter. He has also designed events and exhibitions, from the V&A’s landmark David Bowie Is exhibition, to being asked by Danny Boyle to design the sound effects for the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games. Exhibition projects include:

Taylor Swift Songbook Trail - V&A
Diva - V&A
David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away) - The Lightroom, Kings Cross
Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece - National Gallery
Moments of Silence - Imperial War Museum
David Bowie Is - V&A

Taylor Swift Songbook Trail - V&A Museum

Content creation and system design.

Birds: Brilliant and Bizarre - Natural History Museum

Sound editing, design and implementation for Palma Studio.

Diva - V&A

A major new exhibition at the V&A celebrating the power and creativity of iconic performers, exploring and redefining the role of 'diva' and how this has been subverted or embraced over time across opera, stage, popular music, and film. Delivered over headphones using a location-based tracking system from Tonwelt.

David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away) - The Lightroom, Kings Cross

I designed the sound system for this new exhibition venue, The Lightroom, in conjunction with 59 Productions and London Theatre Company. It features revolutionary new loudspeaker technology from Holoplot. I also worked with composer Nico Muhly and music editor Philip Adams to create the sound design for the first exhibition in the space David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away).

Lilidorei

Set in the gardens of Alnwick Castle, Lilidorei is a magical, mysterious village full of play and home to 9 clans who worship Christmas.

Middleport Potteries, Harper Street regeneration

Next to the famous Middleport Potteries in Stoke-on-Trent is Harper Street, where many of the pottery workers lived. This project undertook to restore the buildings to how they would have been in their heyday. I worked with the exhibition creators to design a sound system, show control systems and to create a soundscape to make the house feel occupied with the families that might have lived there.

Bob Dylan Centre

I worked as sound consultant and edited content for this new museum in Tulsa, Idaho, dedicated to the life and works of Bob Dylan. It features a location based sound playback system using Art Processor’s engine.

Style in Revolt exhibition at SKP / T-10 Beijing

I sound designed this exhibition for Kennedy Studio, working with Creative Technology

Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser - V&A Museum

A major new exhibition by the V&A exploring Alice in Wonderland: its origins, adaptations and reinventions over 157 years.

https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/alice-curiouser-and-curiouser

Binaural soundscapes of Glastonbury Festival for the V&A Museum

Featured on the V&A website, Glastonbury website and covered in The Guardian and NME.

Be transported (back) to Worthy Farm and deep inside the Glastonbury Festival experience with these binaural soundscapes .

Glastonbury is so much more than just music - there are comedians, theatre, circus, workshops, buskers, dozens of cuisines to try, the toilets, the camping, the walking, the walking through mud, the people you pass by, the people you meet. There’s something unexpected round every corner. We wanted to create something that conveyed the whole range of the festival. I spent a couple of days there in 2014, recording lots of sound, and in 2016, interviewing lots of people about their experiences.

Two days in the life of Glastonbury

The Park

Camping in the early hours

Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece - National Gallery

I worked with 59 Productions to create the sound design for this innovative new exhibition at the National Gallery. The exhibition takes a deep dive into just one single painting, the Virgin on the Rocks, by Leonardo Da Vinci. It examines the natural environment that inspired the piece, the use of light, the religious inspirations, and how it differs from the first version of the paining he made.

Unframed - V&A Museum

I worked with film-maker Emily Harris, having previously working on her film for the V&A exhibition Glastonbury: Land and Legend, to create this film for the V&A’s exhibition at the 2019 Prague Quadrennial. We created a 5.1 mix for the film, plus placed specific sounds and interviews in speakers concealed in a model box created by Tortoise in a Nutshell’s designer, Amelia Bird.

Moments of Silence - Imperial War Museum

I worked with 59 Production’s Richard Slaney to create this exhibition for the IWM. In the first space I created a soundtrack entirely out of the sound of sand, to accompany a projected abstract piece animated using sand particles. The second space, which was completely dark and treated to be acoustically dead, featured am ambisonic soundscape of a number of two-minute silences, that myself, my team and others recorded of a variety of memorial silences held across the world, from St. Pauls to a submarine, from Derby Football Club to the Everest Base Camp.

Lock Her Up - Tate Modern

Working with artists Sabrina Mahfouz, Rachel Mars and Paula Varjack, and Fuel, I created three ten-minute pieces responding to the theme of incarcerated women. These were exhibited at the Tate Modern museum, then at the Latitude Festival, with future exhibitions in the planning.

Eloise Hawser: By The Deep, By The Mark exhibition - Somerset House

I worked with Somerset House Studio’s artist Eloise Hawser, and sound artist Laura Mitchison, to create two soundscapes for Eloise’s exhibition, By The Deep, By The Mark, looking at liquid flow within the body, and the city.

Made in Space - Tycho Brahe

I worked with 59 Production’s Lysander Ashton to create the sound design for Copenhagen’s Tycho Brahe permanent exhibition. It features Kinect, touchscreen and motion tracking interactives, as well as regular video content and soundscapes in other parts of the gallery.

Perfume exhibition - Somerset House

Collaborating with curators Claire Catterall, Lizzie Ostrom and podcast producer Jo Barratt, I worked on creating a soundtrack for each of the ten perfumes that feature in this exhibition.

Glastonbury Land and Legend exhibition - V&A Museum

V&A museum

I worked with the V&A Theatre and Performance Department to help create this exhibition, which looks at the world of Glastonbury Festival beyond the music. I went to Glastonbury Festival in 2014 and 2016 to record a mix of atmosphere and interviews with attendees and staff. From this we created two exhibitions, one at the Page Quadrennial in 2015, and on at the V&A museum in London in 2016.

By Me William Shakespeare - Somerset House

Inigo Rooms, Somerset House, for 59 Productions.

More info here.

Shakespeare: Greatest Living Playwright - V&A Museum

V&A Museum, for 59 Productions.

More info here.

500 Years of Hampton Court: A Digital Tapestry - Hampton Court

Hampton Court Buttery, for 59 Productions.

More info here

David Bowie Is - V&A Museum and touring

V&A, for 59 Productions

I cleaned and remastered vast swathes of David Bowie's material for this exhibition, as well as creating original Bowie-esque soundscapes for various areas of the exhibition. I also worked with Sennheiser to design the layout of the innovative Guideport headphone system and the Auro 3D sound system.

The exhibition opened at the V&A Museum, London, UK Summer 2014 and has since visited the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; MIS, Sao Paulo; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; MCA, Chicago;; Philharmonie de Paris, France; ACMI, Melbourne; Groniger Museum, Groniger; MAMbo, Bologna; Warehouse Terrada G1, Tokyo and the Museum del Disseny, Barcelona.

"excellent sound design from Gareth Fry" Der Tagesspiegel

More info here.

Interview with Gareth on David Bowie Is