The Great Escape

This sound work was produced in London in 2014 for Miroslaw Balka’s concurrent solo exhibitions at the Freud Museum and White Cube Mason’s Yard. Conducted by the artist, this eerie recording features White Cube’s male staff individually whistling Elmer Bernstein’s theme tune to the 1963 film ‘The Great Escape’. Usually installed in enclosed, darkened spaces, Balka’s recording evokes a hopeful suggestion of freedom undercut by the fragility of its disembodied, isolated voices. In this way, the allusion to imprisonment is re-enforced, escape shown to be, if not futile, then elusive, and abstracted from its glossier,Hollywood treatment.