Waiting for the gift of sound and vision…
If you’re planning to see David Bowie at Meltdown on Saturday, it’s well worth getting there early to check out the Bowieart Sound and Vision exhibition, if you haven’t already done so. The installation features wonderful work created by artists selected from Bowieart such as: Dan Howard-Birt, Luke Oxley, Giles Round, Graham Hudson, Tsai-Wei Chen, Seb Patane, Mathew Sawyer, Anthony Gross and Gaia Alessi with Richard Bradbury.
Check Bowieart (click on the image above) for a report on the opening night of Sound and Vision, and read a brief outline of the works these artists have exhibited for Sound and Vision in the original Bowieart press release, below. Sound and Vision runs until 29 June 2002 at Level 2, of the Royal Festival Hall.
Total Blam Blam – (BowieNet News Editor)
—————————————————————————————————————————— SOUND AND VISION AT MELTDOWN
The Collection of artists presented in Sound and Vision have been selected from Bowieart, David Bowie?s art website that allows the online community direct access to the talents of young artists, giving them the exposure they deserve at an important time in their careers. Current or recent graduates from top British colleges, the artists raise questions of articulation without relying exclusively on the purely visual. All ten artists concern themselves with the intensities of musical or popular pleasures, using music and contemporary culture as their language or sound as their source.
Despite the fact that the works included in Sound and Vision are conducted on the terrain of the popular they retain a degree of reflexivity while commenting upon a number of wider issues. Dan Howard-Birt for example, may use a song lyric in his work but he is not quoting a band or even making reference to it. The lyric interests him because of the casual and understated way it infers something much bigger; isolated as an articulate utterance the words take on a greater presence, referring to something beyond the linguistic. The same can be said of Luke Oxley, whose new light work for Sound and Vision mischievously and critically re-works a song lyric. In lifting words from an old Grandmaster Flash song Oxley confuses our taught reading and understanding of the language used. Giles Round on the other hand opts for a proclamation that hypnotically erupts from a rainbow of colours, the quote appears to have been captured from a song but its origin cannot be placed.
Other artists introduce tangible sound into the exhibition space whilst using it to greater ends; Graham Hudson playfully stages an orchestral war between two competing mixing decks, where a political West takes on the mystery of the Middle East. Whilst kr buxey presents a three part video work that concerns itself with desire and longing. Using reconfigured footage of women at Tom Jones concerts throughout the 60?s and 70?s, Legion observes compulsive and hysterical behaviour. Representing another side of desire and longing is Tsai-Wei Chen?s Cicada; an audio and visual experience that evokes feelings of loss, loneliness and yearning in a nostalgic attempt to capture the artist?s homeland. By evoking the sound of the cicada the artist creates a mesmerising sonic environment similar to that created in Seb Patane?s video piece. Drone is a new work by the artist that explores the language of sound in an entrancing dirge that visualises white noise. Mathew Sawyer on the other hand uses music itself as his means of communication and presents new audio tracks for the exhibition.
Using up to the minute technology, artist Anthony Gross uses mainstream software customised with downloads from the Internet. Band of One is a new installation consisting of animation and music that centres on a simulated boy band of 3D computer clones. Intended as studies of group male exhibitionism, these images also raise questions concerning the commodification of the body within a generic pop industry. While Gaia Alessi and Richard Bradbury have collaborated on a new work fittingly titled D.I.S.C.O.S, the acronym for all the manmade junk currently floating around the planet outside the atmosphere. Experienced within a configuration of elliptical speakers, the contents of the D.I.S.C.O.S. database orbits the participant detaching itself and drifting ever further away from its meaning.