For some years I have been exploring relationships between art and music (curatorial project Artists who make Music/Musicians who make Art (Radar 5827) “Real Life is Dead & Other Show Tunes 2004 – 2021-2-3-4” (Radar 8120). The core of this enquiry began as a founding member of my old band The Soup Dragons beginning the mid 1980's. I was already studying at GSA when this band started and I had years out of studying while the band was touring etc. Throughout that period I did most of the covers for the singles and albums / merch. etc. When I came back to art school in 89/90 I brought back a lot of those pop ideas about audience and publics and context and engagement and participation back into the artworks/projects I have developed subsequently, thinking closely about how you connect with audiences engagement/ participation over the last decades, particularly through my Real Life Project, that exists almost like a band platform in some ways.
In the last couple of years there has been a renewed interest in the band and the 4 original members of the band got back together and we have released this new/old album for which I did the design work, made the cover, inner sleeve, labels etc. in the style of the sleeves etc. I made in the 1980's. I have been reflecting on the auto-theoretical framing on the development of the relationships between art and music in my research through this band and beyond in the following decades and plan to develop this further in this context.
I made 100 unique small text paintings for the release of the album, as a special edition
We have also released a further 4 records documenting sessions recorded for John Peel and Janice Long on the London label, Precious, adding to the construction of this hauntological reverie.