Rough Music

Rough Music takes its title from the sound of galvanised bin lids struck against the ground — an act of resistance in Northern Ireland, where women banged them to warn of approaching soldiers and patrols.

‘I was fascinated by the transformative element of the mundane domestic object, and of its impact. When I was a kid, I remember my dad telling me that when they banged the bin lids, we used to break their windows or their tellies with the butt of our rifles. He told me this was because the bin lids alerted the gunmen, and that the soldiers could get shot or caught in a riot. The same bin lids were also a signifier of home — back alleys with rows of metal bins were, and still are, an important feature of the aesthetics of the town that contributes to my own identity.’

Holman gathered a collection of galvanised steel lids, each carrying different qualities depending on its source, and grew increasingly interested in how the most mundane domestic object transforms with geography: his own mother putting the bins out, while women her age banged the same lids in the street as his father approached their houses. An ambiguity sits in that representation of conflict. Ugly objects are presented as beautiful, while the title names the sound they made.