After the Rain is an installation that presents an audio recording made by Coupe alongside the means of its making. Recorded in Chopwell Woods in West Gateshead, After the rain documents the sounds emitted from a series of high voltage power lines traversing the woodland, which are loudest when the air around the lines is damp. The piece was recorded with provisionally assembled parabolic microphones, fashioned from lapel microphones and domestic objects such as umbrellas, bowls, lampshades, woks, paint rollers, and decorators’ poles. Presented as a sinister group pointing collectively out of the space like banks of satellite dishes or observatories tracking some distant and unknown activity, the sound has a powerful effect due to both the physicality of the low frequency buzz and hum, and also because of our familiarity with the experience of being near such structures and the massive voltage and danger of death that they imply. This rendering of the sublime is put in contrast by the contingent sounds of the world around; a bee buzzing around the microphone, an aeroplane in the distance, far away cars and sporadic birdsong bring back an unhurried sense of pastoral beauty, creating an atmospheric fog of sound in the gallery space, to be felt as well as heard.

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