Biography
Ain Bailey is a composer, artist and dj.
Her compositions encompass field recordings and found sounds and are inspired by ideas and reflections on silence and absence, architectural urban spaces, and feminist activism. Her electroacoustic compositions are created for a variety of forms, including multichannel and mixed media installations, moving image soundtracks, live performance and dance. She also facilitates workshops considering the role of sound in the formation of identity.
Oh Adelaide (2010) is a collaboration between Bailey and the artist Sonia Boyce. Between 2013 and 2015, Oh Adelaide exhibited at the Glassell School of Art: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; CCA-Glasgow; Tate Britain, London; The Kitchen, New York and the Whitechapel Gallery, London.
Bailey has also created soundtracks for the award winning video Red She Said, 2011, by Kerstin Schroedinger and Mareike Bernien; Jimmy Robert's Abolibibelo performance at Migros Museum, Zurich, Switzerland (2015) and Descendances du Nu performance and installation at CAC-Synagogue de Delme, Delme, France (2016) and European Portraits at PEER Gallery, London (2017). Commissions have come from mouvoir: a Cologne-based dance company, to create sound works for inclusion in the productions Beautiful Me and Cactus Bar, which toured extensively throughout Europe. In 2014, Bailey collaborated with the MichaelDouglas Kollektiv and composed and performed a soundtrack for a new dance production Here Is You And Not Me, Cologne, Germany.
Bailey’s performances include Trun an 8-channel playback composition at Shunt, London (June 2010); a live soundtrack performance at The Showroom Gallery, (March 2011) for Lois Weber’s classic silent film Suspense (1913); A Concert of Sounds Arts (2012) at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London; Ode To No. 6 | The Pitch Sisters Live! (2013) at Iniva, Rivington Place, London, the group show Night of the Tin Tabernacle (2013), Tin Tabernacle, London; Sonic CueB (2014), curated by Luca Nascuiti and The Listening Session at the Peckham Pelican (2015).
Compositions include a suite entitled AGORA which were presented in situ at the British Museum, St. George’s, Bloomsbury and The Rio Cinema in Dalston. The works were presented together at the Peltz Gallery, London (November 2015). Other works include Ode To No. 6; The Pitch Sisters, a multichannel composition; and meditations on record collections as personal archive, disco and death.
Other works include Congregation a performance/presentation as part of Two Steps To The Left… at Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, Transfigured Night at the Art Pavilion in Mile End Park, London, Sounding The Great Hall at Goldsmiths, University of London and Sound Field which was part of the Curating Contemporary Art exhibition at the Royal College of Art, London.
Bailey collaborated with Gaylene Gould on the creation of a Sonic Trail for Tate Britain, London. She also performed at Guest, Ghost, Host: Machine!, the 2017 Serpentine Marathon. She was guest professor in sound at Kunsthochschule Kassel for the winter semester 2017/2018.
In 2019, Bailey exhibited as part of the group shows: ‘The Range’ at Eastside Projects, Birmingham, curated by Rehana Zaman; ’RE:Respite’ at Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland and ‘Sounds Like Her’ at York Art Gallery, curated by Christine Eyenne. The solo exhibition ‘And We’ll Always Be A Disco In The Glow Of Love’ at Cubitt Gallery, was curated by Louise Shelley.
Also in 2019, Bailey was commissioned by Supernormal/Jupiter festivals to create and perform a new composition, ‘Super JR’. In 2020, Bailey was commissioned by Radiophrenia Glasgow, a temporary art radio station, to create a new composition entitled ‘Ode To The N.H.S.’ Ongoing is a commission by Serpentine Projects, in which Bailey conducts sound workshops with LGBTI+ refugees and asylum seekers. In 2021, Bailey had her second solo show ‘Version’ at Wysing Arts Centre and was commissioned to create a sound work/performance for the 2021 Serpentine Pavilion
Recent exhibitions include ‘And We’ll Always Be A Disco In The Glow Of Love’, Cubitt Gallery, London (2019); ‘Version’, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2021); ‘Atlantic Railton’ which was part of the ‘Listening To The City’ sound installation programme in the 2021 Serpentine Pavilion; ‘Untitled: Our Wedding’ for the ‘Black Melancholia’ exhibition at CCS Bard (2022), New York, USA and ‘Trioesque’ for Bruckenmusik 27 in Cologne, Germany,(2022). In 2020 Bailey and Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski created a composition and print entitled ‘Remember To Exhale’ for Studio Voltaire, London. She was the 2022-23 Cavendish Arts Science Fellow at Girton College, University of Cambridge. In 2023, Bailey was commissioned by FACT Liverpool for the ‘Resolution’ research project, which resulted in the exhibition ‘Four’ (2024). The exhibition is a response to time spent working with incarcerated men and their families on the subject of sound and memory.