Presented this month in collaboration with Chisenhale Gallery, London, directed by Zoé Whitley, Nikita Gale’s new series of films for CIRCA titled ‘SOME WEATHER’ spotlight the creative labour of Black women whose voices feature in some of rock music’s most acclaimed recordings, from the Rolling Stones to David Bowie.

Four films titled ‘Heat’, ‘Fog’, ‘Blizzard’, and ‘Rain’ will feature on the CIRCA platform throughout June 2021, appearing daily with the unpredictability of weather patterns. Each film takes on a different radiant hue, employing the immensity of these cities’ advertising screens to shift the atmosphere of their respective urban settings. 

Zoé Whitley: Before we’d met, I’d already encountered your writings about listening as a political act. Drawing on the research of Prof Kate Lacey, you’ve focused on how the freedom to listen is not just about freedom of speech, but is fundamental to ensuring many voices are heard. How did sound come to play such an important role for you as a visual artist?

Nikita Gale: It’s nice to know that the research and writing is finding its way around. It’s always a bit difficult to track how things are resonating with others since digital interactions often feel like projecting into a void. My interest in sound emerged from a more specific interest and exposure to music from an early age. My mother was a music teacher when I was growing up, so there was always a piano in the house; there was always music playing from whatever the most recent stereo system was that my father had brought into the house. My father began his military career as a civil engineer in the Air Force, so there were always little models and drawings of buildings and bridges and other kinds of infrastructures floating around the house. As I entered high school and college, I began recording my own music, mostly very loopy electric guitar compositions that became much more pop-y after college. I was a bedroom musician. I never performed but I had a small following on Myspace and got a little radio play in the mid-00s, haha. After college, I started working in advertising in the buying and planning side, so my job was essentially to make sense of behavioral data and find ways to make that data profitable. So I was working in advertising by day, and started shooting music shows at night, literally. At this point, I was living in Atlanta and was photographing a lot of my friends who were musicians, shooting album covers, press photos; I’d also started a music blog where I’d review singles I was really into. I eventually began experimenting with other mediums but sound always found a way into whatever I was doing.