Shenece Oretha, was born in Monserrat in the Caribbean and now lives and works in London. Oretha’s work explores the act of listening and embodies the potential of sound to create sculptures, multi-channel installations, poetry and print. Oretha graduated in Fine Art at the Slade School of Art in 2018 and has had work exhibited at South London Gallery, Jerwood Arts and the Institute of Contemporary Art. Oretha is a resident at Somerset House Studios.
In September 2022, Oretha began working at The Hepworth Wakefield as an artist-in-residence as part of 20/20 – a large-scale commissioning initiative led by University of the Arts London Decolonising Arts Institute.
During the residency, Oretha explored the relationship between sculpture and sound in modern British art. She researched how artists including Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore engaged with music, instruments and ideas that have a ‘sonic resonance’ and recorded sounds made by touching the sculptures with different materials. Based on these recordings and her research, Oretha created a multi-channel sonic composition which was played through specially devised speaker-sculptures placed among works from the collection in her exhibition Shenece Oretha: TOLLED Listening With/In Wakefield’s Sculpture Collection at The Hepworth Wakefield in 2023/24.
