I’m pleased to announce the 8th event of my extended residency at Hundred Years Gallery – Mercury Over Maps
The evening will feature three sets: Phil Durrant and Ian Stonehouse(modular synths), Lisa Busby and Sharon Gal (voice and electronics), and Bill Thompson (live electronics).
More information: http://billthompson.org/aka_prof_lofi/mercury-over-maps-8
Ian Stonehouse is Head of the Electronic Music Studios at Goldsmiths, University of London, and lectures in sonic art practice. He originally trained as a fine artist at Wolverhampton College of Art with experimental filmmaker Guy Sherwin. Ian is a member of the noise-improv-playback group Rutger Hauser and their splinter faction Rutger Hauser Digest (with Lisa Busby). Rutger Hauser’s eponymous debut album was released on the ADAADAT label in 2016. Ian’s album ‘Voyage en Kaléidoscope’ (secretly made in 1995) finally escaped to the surface in 2016 thanks to the folks at the Lumen Lake. He was part of the ensemble who performed Bill Thompson’s ‘Gates 2017’ at Goldsmiths and contributed tape loops to saxophonist Colin Webster’s recent release ‘vs. Tape Loops’ on the Fractal Meat label. Rutger Hauser are reportedly recording a new album during summer 2018.
Born near London in 1957, Phil Durrant is an improviser/composer/sound artist who has devised his own virtual performance instruments using Reaktor. Recently, he has been performing solo, duo (with Phil Maguire) and trio concerts (with Mark Wastell and Richard Sanderson), using an analogue/digital modular synthesizer system.As a violinist (and member of the Butcher/Russell/Durrant trio), he was one of the key exponents of the “group voice approach” style of improvised music. In the late 90s, his trio with Radu Malfatti and Thomas Lehn represented a shift to a more “reductionist” approach.Durrant’s exploration in the use of live electronics to expand the timbre of the violin, evolved into the creation and building of self-made virtual instruments. His live sampling/treatments duo with John Butcher and his work MIMEO, saw Durrant move from the use of hardware to the use of software in live situations. He has always been keen to transfer the flexibility of playing an acoustic instrument, into his laptop performances.Durrant also performs regularly with the acoustic/electronic group Trio Sowari (with Bertrand Denzler and Burkhard Beins). In addition, he is an Associate Lecturer at Southampton Solent University.Phil Durrant has also collaborated and composed site-specific music for a wide variety of choreographers, including Maxine Doyle, Susanne Thomas, and Gill Clarke.
Lisa Busby is a Scottish composer, vocalist, improviser, and researcher, based in London. Situated across experimental music, performance art, and pop culture, her practice explores processes of making, lo-fi intermediality, and utilization of the found. Materially she is interested in fragments, fringes and collisions of song and noise; artefacts of pop and fan culture; entanglements with historical archives; experimental turntablism and expanded usage of playback, samples and loops; and everyday action as/in performative gesture. She performs and composes with bands The Nomadic Female DJ Troupe and Rutger Hauser; has a long-standing sound and movement collaboration, ’Floor Scores’, with Gabriel Bohm Calles; is part of The Lumen Lake music collective and record label; and a member of the art, education, and politics collective Common Study based at Somerset House Studios. Recent works have seen her grinding tampons in a clothes mangle, utilising The Greatest Hits of The Spice Girls as material for new sound and video works, and re-enacting childhood sense memories in tribute to Mierle Ukeles’ maintenance art. Lisa was Lecturer in the Music Department at Goldsmiths University of London for 7 years, and has recently made a move to work more closely with Goldsmiths Special Collections and Archives as a Visiting Library Fellow. Lisa has released, performed and exhibited in various solo and group situations internationally including The Blackwood Gallery [Toronto], Forthwith Festival [Winnipeg], Vetrarjazz [The Faroe Islands], The Royal Institute of Art [Stockholm], Inter Arts Centre and Signal Centre for Contemporary Art [Malmö], Incubate Festival [Tilburg], Optica Festival [Gijon], Tate Modern, The Southbank Centre, The Ashmolean, Modern Art Oxford, Wysing Arts, The Arnolfini, and Café Oto; and worked with curators and promoters including Verkligheten [Umeå], The Surround, Electra, Audiograft, Bristol Expanded and Experimental Film, Oxford Contemporary Music, Saisonscape, Primary and Radiophrenia [CCA Glasgow, Borealis Bergen]. She has released with record labels Adaadat, Seed, and The Lumen Lake, and published scores with Structo, and Indestructible Energy.
Sharon Gal is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, experimental vocalist and composer, with particular experience of free improvisation and collaborative group compositions. Her work relates to sound, architecture, live performance and participatory art, exploring the psychology of sound and its relationship with space. Sharon performs solo and on-going collaborations with David Toop, Steve Beresford, Phil Minton, Yoni Silver, Anat Ben-David, Lina Lapelyte and Andie Brown. She also directs a series of large group, site specific, participatory compositions/performances, examining the inter-relations between people and place. Her most recent work, Feel the Noise, for an ensemble of over 30 electric guitars and micro amps, was premiered at Goldsmith’s Large Hall in May. Sharon is a co-founder of Resonance 104.4 FM arts radio. Her music was released by various labels, with two solo releases this year; Delicious Fish on the Fractal Meat Cuts label, and The Garden Of Earthly Delights on Visible Near Midnight Recordings.
She performed in the UK & internationally including; The V&A, Science Museum, ICA, The Whitechapel Gallery, Arnolfini Gallery, Tate Modern & Tate Britain, MACBA, and Colour Out of Space, Borealis and Supernormal festivals. https://www.sharon-gal.com/
Bill Thompson is a sound artist and composer. He performs as a soloist and with a number of groups including M/H/T with Jan Hendrickse and Tom Mudd, Airfield with choreographer Ian Spink, and in the past with Keith Rowe, Faust, EXAUDI and others.Although originally trained as a guitarist, Thompson has worked with live electronics for the better part of 15 years. Since 2016/17, however, he has returned to guitar using one built by Moog combining built in electronics with miscellaneous table top devices, found objects, flashing lights, and the occasional vibrator. He has earned numerous awards and commissions including the PRS for New Music ATOM award, the GAVAA visual arts award, a PRS for New Music Three Festival commission, the 2010 Aberdeen Visual Arts Award, and was nominated for the Paul Hamlyn Award in 2012.
Mercury Over Maps is an extended residency by Bill Thompson at Hundred Years Gallery featuring performances, installations and talks with various collaborators and guest artists.
Doors 730pm £5 donation