King Street Studios and Art Gallery

The Art of Music

Presented by

King Street Arts

In collaboration with Lancaster Music Festival

The exhibition covers two sites in Lancaster city centre:

The Galleries upstairs at King Street Arts (Studios) at 5a King Street

(video, photography, assemblages, textile, sculpture and paint)

open 19th - 25th Oct 11-4pm

Fri 22nd & Sat 23rd 11 - 5pm

&

The Gallery upstairs in The Storey Building

(Paintings, print-making and drawing)

open 19th - 25th Oct 11-4pm

Fri 22nd & Sat 23rd 11 - 5pm

There is a long history of links between art and music; throughout the twentieth century many artists made links to music, a few examples are: Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942) and Matisse’s Jazz (1959) and further back Nicholas Poussin’s Dance to the Music of Time (1636).

This exhibition seeks to explore some contemporary connections between visual art and music. We asked artists to submit work they had created which had been inspired by music. We also asked musicians who also had a visual art practice to submit examples of the work they create. Accompanying the artworks are short statements about the artists influences.

What we have from these 49 artists in over 90 art works is a snapshot of the range and individuality of the creative spirit coming from many regions and cultural backgrounds sharing a common interest and fascination were art and music come together, with clear examples of a shared language/values encompassing a sense of rhythm, tone, colour, shape and form. All this, we believe is another example of how art and creativity are a conduit for expressing our shared humanity.

We hope you enjoy the exhibition and please take a little time to vote for your favourite piece for the artist to have a chance of winning a visitors prize and share your thoughts on the work and the exhibition in general. It would be greatly appreciated.

There are some QR codes to relevant music tracks for you to scan on your phone and listen with your headphones.

King Street Arts: Roy Smith and Kath McDonald

Below is a voting form we hope you enjoy looking through the art work in the exhibition and can take the time to vote for your favourite art work or artist. On Saturday the 23rd October we will count the votes and the artwork receiving most votes will receive a cash prize for its maker:

Voting now ended

Prize winner will be announced 23rd Oct.

Please not the dimensions of the work the images are not to scale.

If you are interested in purchasing one of the works use the voting form to indicate which and put your contact details in the comments section.

Alexandra Ghimisi

Alice Evans

I am a musician and artist. I play in the open mic circuit in Lancaster with some of my friends. Each of

these pictures was created whilst listening to Jazz or watching the film Jazz on a Summer's Day.

Barbara Holt

Ben Winter

My paintings are an extension of the musical/artistic processes, still concerned with the human aspect of sound which I've represented as dancers and movement. The combination of human performers with bold colour in a transcendental space is a way of exploring the way space and time are perceived inside and out of the individual.

As a musician and artist my work is primarily focused on mythology and technology. Using electronic sound and musique concrete to create an uncanny relationship between human and non-human based signals. The recording process is very important in my work, the noise of the medium (tape hiss, digital distortions) are as important as the traditional elements of musical composition.

Musically I'm highly influenced by 20th century avant guarde composition and sound art, Cagean aesthetics and current digital experimental work.

Bill Pook

I am a musician and artist. The words in the painting are from one of my songs which is played on the kalimba. Most of my paintings include poetry or lyrics which I perform in the group FEEFEEMOYMOY.

Bob Armitage

Carole Clarkson

Carole Hawthorne

I have always felt that the elements of rhythm, tone, pattern weight and volume are inherent in both music and painting and so there is this great affinity between them. The pieces in this exhibition were directly influenced by the music of Vivaldi and Handel.

I frequently walked to my studio along a canal path and listened to Vivaldi’s Gloria and Handel’s Gloria in Excelsis Deo repeatedly on headphones. At the same time, I observed the movements and reflections in the water.

David Ian Bickley

David is an award-winning media artist whose body of work spans the primitive technological of the 1970’s to the digital cutting edge of today. His media work has manifested as television, installation, electronic music and video art. His work has been shown in many major

museums, galleries and festivals around the world; including the CICA Museum, Korea; Science Gallery, Dublin; A & I GALLERY, LOS ANGELES; HAUN TIE ART MUSEUM, BEIJING; The Electric Picnic and the Glucksman, Cork. LUX London distribute his video art along with [S]edition online. In the early 1980’s Bickley’s video work won 1st prize at the Sony UK Festival and after a move to Ireland in the early 90’s he was fundamental in the evolution of Irish electronic music, earning a Hotpress award in the process. Besides producing video art Bickley has also made important arts documentaries including The Man Who Shot Beckett and the Celtic Songlines. His themes reside in mythic and folklore motif and often use landscape as a form to reflect and process these ideas.

Denise Keen-Junk

Derek Pearce

Diana Armstrong

Emma Clifton-Brown

Gaby Lees

The Street Music series is an ongoing project. As I walk I see words which remind me of songs. I sing the songs in my head to the rhythm of my footsteps and photograph other words in the lyrics as I find them. Over the course of several walks, I piece full phrases of the lyrics together. I'm not sure if it's art or an obsession but some people seem to like them.

Gill Aitken

Gilli Slater

Grace Owen

Graeme Reed

Graham Dean

Helen Bretherick-Stewart

The Beat released the track, ‘Mirror In The Bathroom’ in 1980. I remember listening to it, whilst scrutinizing my adolescent reflection and feeling dismayed. More recently, I replaced a wobbly bathroom mirror and pondered the lyrics to the song. Inspired by Dave Wakeling’s words and the Pop Art images of Roy Lichtenstein, this piece plays with the notions of narcissism, its associated neuroses, isolation, and loneliness. We have recently spent more time than ever seeing ourselves and others on screen. Captured in reverse, a reflection in a mirror never depicts a true likeness. We may invest in altering our physical appearances in radical ways and airbrush what we display through social media in the tweaked version of our lives. But as we crave and create a desirable mask, are we at risk of becoming immune to the reality of ourselves and to each other?

Ian Tothill

I am a violin player and sound artist making solo recordings as Tribe of One

My interest in collage making gave a creative outlet using similar processes to how I conceptualise music. I bring together materials to create textures with hints of narrative, working on pieces until they feel right. The work submitted here is a visual version of the music in my head, soundscapes with hints of tunes and rhythms.

James Mackie

The Golden Helmet of Mambrino is the old brass barber’s bowl that Don Quixote wears on his head, Rocinante is his horse and Dulcinea is a barmaid that becomes his inspiration and his hope.

James is a Lancaster-based artist and musician. In recent years his bands have included Get Carter, Heroes of She and North Sea Hijack. He plays Hammond Organ and Tenor Sax. His musical career started in the 1970s playing sax in the Pharaohs in Lancaster and then going on to record two albums as a member of the Two-Tone band the Selecter and later to play piano for Madness in live work, festivals and TV in the UK, the continent and America. He then composed music for theatre, dance, radio and film for many years whilst also developing as a specialist architectural painter/gilder and mural artist. He now paints full-time while music remains a continuing passion. “People use the same words to describe music and the visual arts – words like tone, rhythm, colour, mood, balance, composition, dynamics, harmony, theme, structure etc. I know if I’m working on a particular canvas there is definitely such a thing as appropriate and inappropriate music to be listening to. With the windmill trilogy displayed here at the Art of Music exhibition I know I couldn’t be listening to ‘Yellow Polka Dot Bikini’ while painting, and I remember several moments clearly when the ‘right’ music immediately had a direct impact on the act of painting – providing energy and encouraging bold decisions.

It may be my background in theatre and radio that informs much of my work. Creating music in those contexts is really about building environments, helping to create ‘the world’ and supporting or pushing forward the narrative. I love paintings with narrative. I think it may not be all that fashionable compared to the conceptual, the abstract and the impressionistic, but I have always been pulled towards work where the artist has presented a world as best as he or she can and then asks the viewer to come up with a load of stuff to answer the ‘how did we get to this reality?’ and ‘what happens next?’ questions.”

Jane Walker

I am an artist inspired by music. My inspiration for these pieces is Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians. The music is structured on 11 chords, each of these art pieces is divided into 11 vertically. The change in chord is barely noticeable the different patterns melt into one another. A painting is static so I have tried to get the whole into one sweep that can be seen at once. There are rules in Reich's music but the musicians have some creative independence. I have tried to find marks that

resemble the little sounds in the music while keeping the network together.

Janet Graves

My connection with the sea goes back to my childhood and my connection to the music of Echo and The Bunnymen (the composers of the song "Seven Seas") goes back to my teenage years. I always listen to music when I create and it always weaves itself into my work with it's rhythm and flow and inspiration. I think and dream about the sea and the sunsets when I work so this song has great significance to me encouraging me into "Burning my bridges and smashing my mirrors" to break through the barriers that try to hold me back. Seven Seas by Echo and The Bunnymen. From the Album Ocean Rain Copyright Warner Chapell Music 1984

Jenette Coldrick

Music and my art, particularly my painting, have a close intertwined relationship. My world was full of melody before birth. I was born in a radio location hut which my drummer dad had wired with speakers for the full length of the building. I began life with Radio Luxemburg, American swing, Classical and Jazz and then on to Radio Caroline. I have a beautiful autoharp which I play rather badly. Finlandia by Sibelius was the background music for these paintings.

Julia Preston

The oud is a traditional lute instrument from the Middle East, also commonly played in Armenia. Together with the oud I have created an abstract mixed-media background also using a loosely stamped 'arevakach' sign, the symbol for eternity often used in Armenia and Georgia. This symbol is often found on stone cross carvings.

Kate Eggleston-Wirtz

Krystyna Spink

Larisa Maksimenko

Lee Cheng

The two generative canvas attribute to two avant-garde composers of the 20th century, John Cage and Terry Riley, who composed two very important pieces that influenced the contemporary musical landscape. 4'33" and In C overturned our understanding, appreciation, and practice of music, which unfolded what music can be.

Lee Jenkinson

Both artworks are inspired by artists I have grown up with from childhood, The Beatles and Beach Boys. "She's Leaving Home" by The Beatles is a relatively new emotive discovery, resonating with me as an adult with grown up children, it now brings a lump to my throat every time I hear it. Feelings of loss and of guilt spring up, the fact that "your babies gone" and how much more could you have done to make them happier while they were growing up. "In My Room" by The Beach Boys is a song I have identified with since my early teens. The feelings of refuge, safety and an enjoyment of solitude, it transports me back every time I hear it. I love wallowing in the melancholy it evokes.

Leo Crane

Leonard Green

As a teenager and into my twenties I was a Northern Soul DJ in Wigan in the 60s and 70s and my immersion in this hybrid music prompted me to realise my feelings in response to a particular piece of music and the memories it evoked. I work using acrylic paint on canvas. The painted surfaces are kept simple to allow expressive ‘drawing’ to be the quintessential feature; and it is in response to the energy of the dance moves in Northern Soul Music that I create the feeling of action and dynamism. “Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.” Wassily Kandinsky

Lisa Banks

Lucy Sharkey

Dale Lodge: MP13TZ

These three pieces form part of my 'Hand That Rocks' collection of original paintings. I had the idea to depict some of the greatest names in music history as a suit of playing cards.

Nicola Hepworth

I am a painter and an Art teacher in a Girls' state secondary school in East London. We have a fantastic Steel Pan Band at the school and I was inspired by some of their performances to create some artworks. I made sketches and took photographs of the girls playing at a concert. These were used to create a series of small paintings and prints and then a large oil painting. The shapes and colours, the light reflecting from the steel pans, the variety of personalities of the performers and the melodic sounds all influenced the outcome. I wanted the painting to have rhythm and movement, and for the individuals to stand out but also to be unified as they are when playing in a band.

Patsie Bagot

Paul Blenkhorn

Paul Hartley

I am a multimedia artist. The work has developed from a passion for drawing, printmaking and painting which has gradually become more minimal. I always play jazz CDs, sometime the same one each time and use it as a source of energy and rhythm to accompany and influence me as I draw. I literally find myself at times drawing faster or slower as the music progresses from track to track. I use the names of the musicians involved to name the work. In this case I was listening to Charles Lloyd who I admire a lot as one of the greatest saxophone players of all time and used the varying energy of his cool and at times frenetic playing to inspire the vigorous pencil slashes across the paper. This is tempered by collage elements more carefully placed after the graphite marks to create the compositional structure that I feel works for the piece. This is a diptych, and the imagery should be considered as a continuation from a to b. In some ways the marks may seem to represent musical notation, however the real impetus of music is the way in which it influences the execution of the work.

Pete Marsh

Pete Marsh was a member of the stage crew at two music venues in Manchester, The International 1 and The Apollo. Pete is less concerned with topographical detail but much more interested in the overall dynamic, mood, and atmosphere of live performance. Whenever possible Pete prefers to work from life and will sketch members of a band during the sound-check and the live show. Pete only produces work inspired by concerts which he has attended, feeling that first-hand experience of the atmosphere is crucial to his work.

Rachael Addis

Rachael is a contemporary painter based at Rogue Artists’ studios in Manchester. Her practice is fundamentally a mark making process; in which she creates abstract landscapes by applying a multitude of painted layers and patterns to the surface of canvas and paper. Music plays a central role to the creation of Rachael's work and much of the philosophy behind her work is inspired by playing with the boundaries between the visual and music. Rachael refers to her paintings as reflecting "sounds". And the texture, marks and colour within the work aim to evoke the senses which can be likened to a visual noise. Rachael always creates by listening to music and the marks she puts on the surface of the canvas have a connection to the music she listens to. The majority of the music that Rachael listens to is repetitive in nature for example; Steve Reichs, Music for 18 musicians, has informed the structure and rhythm within the painting submitted " Gili lTuwan Gang". Initial ideas for Rachael’s paintings come from automatic drawings in response to listening to music.

Rachel Evans

Richard O'meara

Birdsong has long been an inspiration for classical music and remains a constant background soundtrack in all our lives. These two images are made up from wildlife photographs I have taken and brought together to celebrate the joy they bring to our lives.

Robyn Dansie

Sandra Beccarelli and Kathryn Bradbury

Shane Johnstone

Tess Baxter