bone stone voice alone
Curated by May Rosenthal Sloan,
Dundee Contemporary Arts, 24 October 2025 – 18 January 2026 . Photos by Ruth Clark.

PRESS and FILM PROGRAMME (links):
The Ten Best shows in the UK and Ireland 2025, FRIEZE, Sean Burns
Must-See: Lauren Gault Unearths Stories Held in Stone, FRIEZE, Lisette May Monroe
Daily Lazy Review, Caitlin Merrett King
Art Monthly, (review released February 2026)
Short Film Programme (18th January 2026)


bone stone voice alone is a is an exhibition of newly commissioned work by Lauren Gault, curated by May Rosenthal Sloan. Gault’s sculpture, print, sound and moving image uses the mythological figure of Echo from the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses to navigate the land of Tayside and beyond, asking who has a voice in relation to land rights, access and ownership. Echo, often a metaphor for censorship is re-examined through this body of work, thinking through where agency and power can lie through repetition, and through her own field of (yet to be realised) potential.

Echo is never represented in the gallery, but she is alluded to, circled around and suggested in a multitude of forms and materials. In placing Echo as an observational figure, both witness to and voice of environmental change, Gault returns to a subject that repeatedly appears in her practice. She asks how the displacement of land workers, whether forcible, through economic instability or policy decision making has a knock-on effect that goes beyond individual or community. How this displacement results in the large-scale loss of intimate land knowledge, the kind that is built up through years, decades and generations. Gault’s instinct and ability to draw in collaborators and colleagues is inherent to her work. The resulting voices reflect the urgency of the questions that she is asking and the fact that while her own artistic identity is strong and distinctive, she resists the imposition of a single, authoritative voice. Echo herself is hard to know. She is a human-like figure but she is not human. She is defined by voice, but her words are not her own. Rather than attempting to pin her down, Gault plays on this intangibility, layering material processes, reflections and views through, to symbolise the elusiveness of the here and now and the slippery question of where agency and voice can or should lie in relation to the land of which we are all custodians.

https://www.dca.org.uk/download/file/S0pZaUlnV1ZxbVdPNmdNTlFDcFoxUT09/Exhibition-Guide-Lauren-Gault/