Contributed by Kenneth Greiner / St. Augustine’s Tower, Hackney’s oldest building, is a late-medieval stone structure once connected to a long demolished church. At times used as a mortuary and tool shed, it’s now a museum, open once a month in this recently gentrified corner of East London. Inside the Tower are four floors for immersive art, connected by an agonizingly narrow set of stairs. Earlier this month, this improbable venue presented the group exhibition “Sonorous,” which concerned vibration as a means of communication. And it worked. The weathered crypts and headstones at the base of the tower echoed a somber song that the sound of the Tower bell magnified, rustling the cobwebs that rested in its eaves.
performing Resonant Bodies on the ground floor
On opening night, the Tower’s capacity was limited to 40, the artist duo Cell Deletion (Ushara Dilrukshan & Sonnie Carlebach) started things off hauntingly with their “noise opera” Resonant Bodies, using vocalization, instrument, and flute to fill the half-submerged space, setting a melancholic tone. On the wall, Ushara Dilrukshan’s steel works stood in a line, reverberating their sounds around the room. Up the first flight of stairs, next to The Pendulum Case, was a sound bath of a different sort with the almost atonal glitterings of Tutu Tuğçe Sönmez & Yasmin Rai’s Beta Reflections. The room featured Textures of Grief, a linen tapestry by Léa Cuvelier, and Hyunah Koh’s large-scale unstretched painting When foxtails bloom and petals drift, showcasing nature-infused, Ab-Ex-adjacent paint throwing techniques that suggested new beginnings.
2025, installation view
On the second floor, Jonathan Michael Ray’s transparent, knotted Convergence series obscured the light as it passed through the open-air slats. In turn, Ekaterina Adelskaya’s video piece Other Worlds, projected onto the uneven gray walls of The Bell Room, depicted a crystallization of partially obscured texts in an old book. The optical effects made for a beautiful disintegration, perhaps lamenting the loss of meaningful storytelling in a world inundated with ads, influencers, and partisan diatribes.
Finally, on the top floor, more modest works were scattered around the edges of the room alongside Ray’s Not Really Now, Not Anymore, reminiscent of druidic Ogham tree carvings or naive sketches on gravestones, tugging at the historical tension between pagan traditions and Christianity. Matthew Duan’s gentle plaster sculptures, which brought to mind seashells, animal bones, and Surrealist origami, were installed like a personal altar, encouraging a deeper look into the Tower’s interior. This seemed to suggest that we were near the end of our journey, encouraging us to slow down and contemplate the tick of the Tower’s clock before proceeding up the final flight of stairs to the observation deck’s panoramic views of Hackney.
2019, limestone and paint, 16 x 8 x 4 inches
plaster and mixed media, installation view
Ambitious in its poetic framing, this exhibition came with a caveat. It was only accessible to those able to navigate its forbidding stairway. This raised the question of whether there is a legitimate place in contemporary art for a mode of presentation that challenges viewers by placing obstacles in their paths. Like pilgrimage, such a requirement might enhance the payoff, given that familiar ground-floor galleries, with their white walls and dry institutional formality, can be disaffecting. “Sonorous,” by contrast, rewarded the adventurous art-goer, who, as the Tower card of the Rider-Waite Tarot suggests, must be willing to endure a bit of disruption on the way to transformation and higher perspective.
“Sonorous,” Artists include Ekaterina Adelskaya, Sonnie Carlebach, Léa Cuvelier, Ushara Dilrukshan, Matthew Duan, Hyunah Koh, Yasmin Rai, Jonathan Michael Ray, and Tutu Tuğçe Sönmez. Curated by Taehyun Jung. St. Augustine’s Tower, Hackney, London. March 5–7, 2026.
About the author: Kenneth Greiner (b. 1990) is an American artist based in London. He holds an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art and has participated in residency programs at Hands-On Projects, St. Briavels Castle, and the University of East London, exhibiting work at Purist Gallery, Roha Gallery, and The Factory (LIC), among other venues.
