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Collaboration |
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| Monty Adkins |
Katsketch20b, digital and paint hybrid sketch.
copyright Pip Dickens |
Pip Dickens |
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Collaboration Latest: ‘SHIBUSA – Extracting Beauty’
A major audio visual collaboration between
Monty Adkins and Pip Dickens
paintings and
sound compositions including
launch of their
book about the project and associated
research
themes.
Monty And Pip continue to collaborate
most
recently through a Leverhulme Trust Award Artist in Residence project at the University of Huddersfield.
This will culminate in new sound
works and
paintings based on their research
in the
UK and in Kyoto, Japan examining
pattern,
rhythm, colour and vibration
in Japanese
kimonos and katagami stencils.
In February 2012 they will launch
a book
charting their research and plan
a substantial
exhibition - SHIBUSA - Extracting Beauty .
Below is an extract from a recent
interview
with Monty on how the collaboration
originated
and his resultant album - Fragile.Flicker.Fragment - released in April 2011 by Audiobulb.com.
Excerpt from Interview with The Milk Factory on Monty Adkins new album
Your new album, Fragile.Flicker.Fragment,
released on Audiobulb, is based
around work
you have done with visual artists.
How did
you work on the tracks? Were
they collaborative
efforts with both music and visual
art being
created together, or are they
more reflections
on existing works?
For this album there were a number of different
approaches due to the different
artists involved.
With Brass Arts there was a clear
concept
from the beginning for the visual
component.
They left me to respond to their
work having
given me some ideas of the kind
of soundworld
they wanted. With Pip Dickens
some paintings
were already finished and some
were only
half completed so the latter
became more
of a collaborative process. The
important
thing about these works is that
they are
not just illustrative of the
paintings. Just
like Five Panels, I am more interested
in
understanding the technique and
motivations
of the painter/artist in order
to develop
a soundworld and structure that
really reflect
the artwork. In some cases this
produces
a way of approaching sound that
is rather
different – for me part of the
collaborative
process is precisely this type
of challenge.
You name painter Pip Dickens
as one of the
main source of inspiration for
this album,
and with whom you are working
on a number
of projects. How did you meet
her and how
did the idea of collaborating
come up?
Internet dating – almost! I was looking on
the internet for contemporary
artists who
have found inspiration in music.
There are
a lot of synaesthesic painters
out there
painting Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
or Charlie
Parker saxophone solos, but I
found a real
empathy with Pip’s approach –
that of looking
more at the technique and process
of the
music in order to create something
original
in her paintings. Her Multilateral
series
based on the Bach’s counterpoint
techniques
are unlike any paintings I’ve
seen. Anyway,
I decided to send her an email
just saying
how much I liked her work and
explained a
little of what I was doing. After
a couple
of emails and her realizing that
I wasn’t
an internet stalker we decided
to meet up.
Luckily she’s based only 25 miles
from where
I live – not that I knew that
when I first
contacted her. When we met we
talked for
hours about her work, my work
and our ideas.
It was clear from the beginning
that working
together would be something really
worth
trying. Pip had a big retrospective
exhibition
coming up [Toward the Light by Pip Dickens at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford: Currently available as A Touring Exhibition] and as a first step we worked together on
six paintings with music. Since
then our
collaboration has blossomed.
One of the important
things about our collaboration
is that the
art and music both come from
the same wellspring
but remain independent artworks.
The audience
can look at the paintings or
listen to the
music and they make sense on
their own. However,
when you bring them together
there is an
amplification of certain themes,
ideas and
techniques – the result is more
than a sum
of its parts.
Visit www.pip-dickens.com and http://www.montyadkins.com/ for more information. or Join the Mailing List:
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