A good number of intrepid people braved the snow and ice to attend on Tuesday night, and kept their coats and scarves on in the icy lecture theatre. Leeds Art Gallery had also been suffering the winter chill, and just when we thought we could not get any colder, the fire alarms went off mid way through Matt's informative conversation with curator Tanja Pirsig-Marshall.
Shortly after graduating from University of Newcastle, where he studied sculpture as part of his Fine Art Degree, Matt decided to give up his studio practice because he found it so isolating. Instead he began collaborating with a house music producer in Newcastle and developed a relationship-based practice that referenced the music subculture and their communities.
Up until eighteen months ago, Matt supported his practice as a freelance gallery technician, alongside his commissions and residencies. He is represented by two galleries Workplace and
ZieherSmith in New York, he modestly said that he was a loss maker to the galleries, although they seem to
benefit from the media generated by his work! (Matt won Becks Futures Prize in 2006)
As a result of Workplace putting on a solo show in
NADA Miami Art Fair in 2006
Arthouse in Austin, Texas approached Matt to work on a solo piece in Austin, with a fairly loose brief that the work would have something to do with the music scene. Austin, Matt explained, calls itself the 'Live Music Capital of the World' This live scene mostly Blues and Country.
The piece currently in Leeds Art Musuem,
'these are the days' explores the Austin punk scene in the late 70's early 80's and the now. The decision to visit the punk and hardcore scene was the result of Matt immersing himself in the community in close to a year of regular two week long visits. An early encounter in a bar with a very well connected video archivist helped Matt determine his direction, and put him in contact with a significant number of punks from the early days. The final exhibition at Arthouse, Austin was accompanied by display cases containing ephemera from both era's deliberately mixed up to muddle the distinction between then and now. Unsurprisingly the punks from the 70's/80's don't see anything fresh and original in the stuff happening now, and those creating music now, acknowledge they pay tribute but see their work as being totally relevant.
Matt was questioned about the degree to which he controls the process, whilst he was keen to create an infrastructure, such as the lighting, use of film, events, and gigs, he appears to be at ease in letting the collaborative process determine the final outcome to some degree. For example the split screens show a crowd scene of an 'All Ages' concert that a he and Timmy, young hardcore promoter, (Chaos, Tejas) collaborated on putting together specifically for the art work, without the soundtrack. The other screen shows a five piece band put together for just 48 hours, asked to create an entirely new soundtrack to correspond with the video image of the crowd scene. Both scenes were shot in Super16 film and used the same lighting techinques. Other layers in this interesting approach & interweaving the past and future where the producer, the studio, amps.
To understand the process Matt takes when creating new work deepened my appreciation of
'these are the days'.
What's next for Matt? By this point my hands were frozen and I can hardly read my writing, he has a solo show coming up in at the Fredericanum in Kassel, Germany and a new commission for Art In The Underground plus numerous smaller projects inbetween.
