RELICS OF SOUND

Introduction

For me, art and music are simultaneously essential and mysterious. When I'm in my studio listening to music and dreaming artworks into existence, I'm still the teenager in my bedroom doing exactly the same thing. Nothing has changed. Of course, I wanted to be a rock star. But deep down I knew I was an artist.

In the pre-digital world, records, band T-shirts and posters were treasures – hard to come by and expensive. I kept and organised my concert tickets. I leapt up on stage to grab setlists or begged roadies to give them to me. More than just souvenirs, these were precious artefacts that became personal devotional items.

Like millions of young people before me, I was obsessed with the aesthetics of popular music, from the fonts on album covers to the music videos. It was a whole universe to make art about. When I started art school in the early 90s, song lyrics and song titles provided the inspiration and content for paintings. But I wasn’t yet ready to give up my precious music ephemera to my artworks.

From 2012 I began to incorporate objects with previous musical lives into my artworks – band T-shirts, musical instruments, drumsticks, album covers, vinyl records, guitar strings, guitar picks, guitar cases, amplifiers and road cases.

Crucially, these relics of sound were once loved, played or worn. I worship and fetishise the history and energy of these objects and channel that into their next life as an artwork. Let's just say every amp is a readymade plinth!

Please enjoy my RELICS of SOUND. 

Always a fan,
Nell