1-2-3-4
Artists
Martin Creed
The Apathy Band (Bob &
Roberta Smith, George
Barker, Victor Mount, Leonardo Ulian)
The Barefoot Lone Pilgrim aka
David Blandy
The Coolness
Plastique Fantastique
Date: Friday 18th December 2009
Time: 7.00pm-11.00pm
Location: Fabrica, 40 Duke St, Brighton, BN11AG
Tickets: £6.50 in advance
available from Grey Area,
Fabrica, Rounder Records, Resident Music, and online at
www.amiando.com/1234artgig
Grey Area presents a one-off art-gig bringing together
five artists who use music performance as an integral
component of their practice. Staged in front of the altar of a
deconsecrated Church, now Fabrica gallery,
1-2-3-4
features a diverse billing of inter-disciplinarians
who both play and display
.
'When I'm doing music work I want to do visual work, and
when I'm doing visual work I want to do music work. For me
they are more or less the same, in both being things I try
to do. I like them both. I like listening to music when
I'm making things, and I like looking at things when I'm
playing music.' -
Martin Creed
Turner Prize winner Martin
Creed's songwriting runs parallel to his visual work, and
has been a major aspect of his creative output since the
beginning of his career in the late 1980's. Creed's
minimal music often has a
self-referential simplicity, which is typied by the song
1-2-3-4;
the title of which
incorporates the song's entire lyrical content. Creed's
visual work comes from the objects and words of everyday
life, and in much the same way his music uses basic building
blocks to form stripped-down compositions that are both
playful and immediate.
T
hroughout his career Bob
& Roberta Smith has written music and played in bands,
frequently blending live performance with sculptures and
painted text pieces. Smith's past bands have included the
Ken Ardley Playboys
, who had their first
45 released on Billy Childish's Hangman Records label. Smith
also hosts his own weekly radio show called MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN
MUSIC on Resonance FM. The
Apathy Band was formed to explore ideas about
artist/audience engagement and the expectations of live
performance. The band's attempts to avoid captivating an
audience with its 'apathetic' manner, revives a spirit of
post-punk shoe-gazing in rambling sets of inescapably
self-conscious entertainment.
David Blandy will embody the
musical spirit of The Barefoot Lone Pilgrim;
a persona famed for his
journeys of self discovery and pilgrimage to sites featured in
various soul, rap, and hip-hop songs. The Five
Boroughs of the Soul (2004) documents Blandy in moments
of homage, spinning records at the locations featured in those
songs. This work expresses the need to physically and
psychologically place shared experiences in music. The
Barefoot Lone Pilgrim
will DJ through his
well-traveled legendary sound system and will be joined
by a team of very special guest performers.
The Coolness are a London based
rock/electro band with a fast growing reputation for their
lively sonic concoctions, DIY aesthetic, and shameless burlesquery.
Plastique Fantastique
- avatars from the extreme
future and the past - is a fiction produced by David Burrows
and Simon O'Sullivan and others. The fiction is created
through the production and performance of objects, protocols
and avatars first presented in writing, manifestos and
comics. Plastique Fantastique is an exploration of the
different temporalities and durations produced by art,
popular and mass culture and sacred practices.
Plastique Fantastique are
mummers, a band of masked performers who wander through a
town or village and ‘gate-crash’ gatherings or
events to perform a play. Plastique Fantastique combine the
folk tradition of mumming - often banned for providing
‘cover’ for individuals to settle scores with
their ’betters’ or commit criminal acts - and
the rituals of apocalyptic cultures from the future to
produce disorientating encounters and new myths, so as to
call forth a people-yet-to-come.
A neon text piece by
Darren Edwards entitled HIC MANEBIMVS OPTIME (2008) will
be suspended above the audience to signal the Off-site
residency of the Grey Area gallery within Fabrica for one
night only. Loosely translated as WE WILL BE HAPPY HERE,
these words (attributed to Aeneas upon finding Italy)
have previously been sited in a wood on a remote
Canadian island, and form part of a body of work
entitled Our Infinite Day-trip. The function of the work's
nomadic search for a place to be, shifts again when
temporarily 'pitched' within a space that becomes its
host.
1-2-3-4 has been curated by Daniel Pryde-Jarman
Discussion
A free discussion event featuring selected artists from
1-2-3-4
will take place at the University of Brighton's Sallis
Benney Theatre, Grand Parade, on Thursday 28
th
January 2010 at 7pm. The themes of the discussion will
focus on the event's interdisciplinary performances and their
relation to spaces with 'altered' functions.
Tickets
Tickets are available online
at
www.amiando.com/1234artgig
and at the following venues:
Grey Area
, Lower Ground Floor, 31
Queens Rd, Brighton, BN13XA
Fabrica
, 40 Duke St, Brighton, BN11AG
Rounder Records
, 19 Brighton Square, BN1 1HD
Resident Music
, 28 Kensington Gardens,
Brighton, BN1 4AL
If you would like any additional
information about this event please contact the Grey Area
Address: Lower Ground Floor, 31
Queens Rd, Brighton, BN13XA
Mobile: 07735037945
Email:
thegreyarea@hotmail.co.uk
Website:
www.greyareagallery.org
1-2-3-4
is sponsored by...
University of Brighton, CRD,
Grand Parade
Pussy Home Boutique, 3a
Kensington Gardens
Hotel Pelirocco, 9-10 Regency
Square, Hove
The Guitar, Amp, & Keyboard
Centre, 76-81 North Rd, Brighton
Adult & Community Learning,
Connaught Centre, City College Brighton & Hove
Lighthouse, 28 Kensington St, Brighton
Same Sky, 1 College Rd, Brighton
