Four Music Past
Four Music presents a live music performance held at the openings of Four. Focused on the current exhibition in Four, the musicians are invited by the artist or curator to perform works which compliments the exhibition and to add new interpretations of the works on display.Karl Him & Robin Watkins
13th April 2007 7pm
Four is pleased to present a live performance by Karl Him and Robin Watkins. For this performance Karl and Robin will be playing improvised guitar works.
Karl Him is an Irish musician, composer and multi instrumentalist. Karl released his critically acclaimed debut album 'Electronic Laments' on the Spitroast Label in 2002. Recently Forest Project is a music/sound work inspired and influenced by "uniqueness of place" will be performed live in a forest located in County Sligo called Union Woods. As part of the exhibition "Your Position as Much as your Environment" at the Model and Niland gallery. With an upcoming release as a limited cd.
Karl is also a member of the experimental outfit Soun din and is a founding member of the band A=apple and will be releasing an album in June 2006 with this band. He has toured extensively in Ireland as a solo artist and as part of Nina Hynes band. Most notably Karl played at the opening of the Irish pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennial of contemporary art.
Robin Watkins has released 8 full length albums in various constellations over the past 8 years. Selected performances include Zentrale Randlage - Berlin, Inkonst - Malmö, Nursery - Kulturhuset - Stockholm, Project Arts Centre - Dublin, Forma Nova ’04 - Fredrikshavn, P3 - Live broadcast - National Swedish Radio, Pallas Studios – Dublin, MS Stubnitz – Rostock and Mono - Oslo.
Watkins has also exhibited collaboratively at The Royal Hibernian Academy, Mother’s Tankstation, Catalyst Arts Gallery, Project Gallery and Model Arts & Niland Gallery. He is currently an artist in residence at the Fire Station Artists’ Studios, Dublin.
Ciaran Walsh
27th July 2006Four is pleased to present a limited edition CD of Ciaran Walsh's "Top Ten Playlist", available for the first 50 visitors to the opening evening. The compilation, bouncing off pop culture, offers another entry point to the work.
Graduating from Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology in 2003 and currently living and working in Dublin, Ciaran Walsh has exhibited in 'Haunted' in the City Arts Centre, 'Elsewhere from Here' in the Workroom, and 'Flagged' a part of the VISUALISE: Carlow public art programme. He has most recently exhibited as part of 'Imagined - Visions of Architecture' in The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon in June of this year and is presently working as curator for part of VISUALISE: Carlow's 2006/2007 programme.
Jürgen Simpson
1st June 2006Four is pleased to present a live performance by Jürgen Simpson. His live performance will delight in the high art of mass culture through the soundscape of twentieth century cartoons. First-generation re-interpretations by Karl Burke, Michele Hourrigan, Séan Lynch and Cóilín Rush. Second-generation re-interpretations by you.
Jürgen Simpson was born in Dublin and studied composition with Kevin Volans, Donnacha Dennehy and Roger Doyle. He gained a Masters in Music and Media Technologies from Trinity College Dublin. An active performer of live electronics, Jürgen Simpson has performed with the Crash Ensemble and at MediaLab’s NIME 2002 and the 2000 Cork Intermedia Festival. Future performances include a concert of solo electronic music in London in 2003. He is also accordionist with rock band ‘The Jimmy Cake’ and is currently collaborating with piper Davy Spillane on a new album. He is currently lecturer in music technology at the University of Limerick.
Sue Tompkins
6 April 2006Four is pleased to present Sue Tompkins "On Stage" a video screening of a live performance. 'Performance poetry that moves from the page to the voice, from speech to song, from song to signal, from signal to pure sound.' Her stream of consciousness lyrics, move from emotive first person statements ('you did what you had to do') to quotations from a wider range of influences, both musical and art historical. As is characteristic of Tompkins, the emotional content of the piece was interrupted by the insertion of seemingly banal phrases such as 'I never stay in hotels' or 'I read it in a magazine', and half-sense fragments ('or / or / oror / or / hot countries / hot / or hot countries'). The audience works to hold in their mind the shifting frame of references. The rhythmic effects wrought through Tompkins' breath control, foot movements, pauses and smashed punctuation render the allusive content of the work more difficult to reach, but more ultimately far more memorable than in a standard narrative or pop song. -Sarah Lowndes 2005
Sue Tompkins work has been described as "strung-out exercises in associative free thought: performance poetry that moves from the page to the voice, from speech to song, from song to signal, from signal to pure sound." Her work encompasses the real space of the gallery, taking the form of typewritten text, collage and painting and the temporal space of live performance, shifting between the two forms and creating a dialogue between them. Born in Leighton Buzzard, England in 1971, Tompkins studied Painting at Glasgow School of Art (1990-1994)
Annika Ström
31st March 2006To coincide with the opening of Mine Are of Trouble, the artist Annika Ström will perform, in her absence, a song written specially for the opening night. Invited by Declan Clarke to perform at the opening, Annika was unable to do so due to prior commitments. Instead she has chosen to write a song, record herself performing it, and post it to FOUR so it can be played, only once ever and never again, at the opening night.
Annika Ström is a Swedish artist currently based in England. She has shown extensively throughout Europe and the U.S. She has had solo exhibitions at Secession, Vienna. c/ o Atle Gerhardsen, Berlin, Casey Kaplan, New York and participated in group shows at Palais de Tokyo Bawag foundation, Vienna, CCAC San Fransisco, Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art Malmö, Sweden.
Karl Him
15th December 2005Four is pleased to present a live performance by Karl Him. For this performance Karl will be playing some of his current pieces along with improvised guitar works.
Karl Him is an Irish musician, composer and multi instrumentalist. Karl released his critically acclaimed debut album 'Electronic Laments' on the Spitroast Label in 2002. Upcoming releases include " The Forest Project " a commissioned music project that will be released in the new year as a limited cd.
Karl is also a member of the experimental outfit Soun din and is a founding member of the band A=apple and will be releasing an album in June 2006 with this band. He has toured extensively in Ireland as a solo artist and as part of Nina Hynes band. Most notably Karl played at the opening of the Irish pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennial of contemporary art.
Nina Hynes
17th November 2005Four is pleased to present a live performance by Nina Hynes. This will be a part of her various side projects exploring eclectic forms of music. She will be experimenting in atmospheric sound for the launch with a follow up with a solo show in February 2006.
"I love observing people over an espresso, eavesdropping on other people's conversations. I write down words or lines that other people say, but only if they grab me. If my heart misses a beat then I know it's a good line, that it's important. Sometimes songs come in five minutes; other times I'd write down lines for months, which then evolve when certain melodies arrive." "It's also a mixture of personal relationships, me reading the newspapers, watching the news and seeing the world; the fantasy stuff like movies. It's how I cope with life. If I didn't do music I'd probably be locked away. I have the kind of personality that needs to deal with stuff. I feel a lot, and I'm not very good at sublimating."