Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery

Object Lessons: A Musical Fiction

Fitts & Holderness

Bryce Galloway

Caroline Johnston

Torben Tilly & Robin Watkins

curated by Laura Preston and Mark Williams

06 August – 10 October 2010

Object Lessons: A Musical Fiction, was an exhibition curated by Laura Preston and Mark Williams that also investigated the past in the interests of engaging the future. Five artists/collectives, who all operate between the spheres of music and the visual arts—Fitts & Holderness, DJ $1 Record aka Bryce Galloway, Caroline Johnston, Torben Tilly & Robin Watkins, and Ronnie van Hout—were invited to produce new works that took as their starting point the idea of “the record”.

The record is a dissemination device and a visual object, a record of the event in time and a commodification of a moment in history—Bruce Russell

Object Lessons was conceived in the wake of the digital download. The project investigated the visual forms of music as a way to address issues of documentation and distribution. It was curious about how histories accrue around this object as a material artefact and as a commodity. Intriguingly the music record provides access to the past and yet it implies an inevitable distance from the contexts and circumstances of its production. Therefore the lesson of this object is that while the past may be ultimately unobtainable, stories, memories, values, and beliefs assemble around it.

The exhibition explicitly focused on independent music production as a site where the social, economic and political effects of recording are re-negotiated by artists eager to work outside “the system” and usually “off the record”. Here questions of commodification were critically addressed and social and cultural codes are inventively reworked.

The works presented by the artists forecast the future by reconnecting with the past, to resist by reorienting the “impending tsunami” of the digital download and the modalities of communication within which music now circulates.

Object Lessons was the second project to be curated for the Adam Art Gallery’s Sound Check research initiative that explores the intersections between music and the visual arts. It was accompanied by a public programme of talks, workshops and performances. This exhibition project was accompanied by an illustrated publication with an essay by theorist and musician Bruce Russell and a CD interview with Campbell Kneale and Antony Milton.

Exhibitions supported by LUX, London, VideoPro, ImageLab and Coopers Creek.

This exhibition was staged concurrently with The Otolith Group: A Long Time Between Suns.

Exhibition guide

Media release

Public programme pdf

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Object Lessons

DJ$1 Record (aka Bryce Galloway), Pre Love and Hate Volumes 1-80, 2007-2010, colour pigment print, CDR ‘mixtape’ and photocopy. Installation view, Object Lessons: A Musical Fiction, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2010. Photo: Michael Salmon

DJ$1 Record (aka Bryce Galloway), Pre Love and Hate Volumes 1-80 2007-2010. colour pigment print, CDR ‘mixtape’ and photocopy. Installation view, Object Lessons: A Musical Fiction, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2010. Photo: Michael Salmon

Caroline Johnston, Songs about “PLEASE REMOVE”, 2010. DVD with sound (8' 39" repeated). Installation view, Object Lessons: A Musical Fiction, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2010. Photo: Michael Salmon

Torben Tilly & Robin Watkins, Fig. 2: On Seeing Through Obstacles, Across Space and Round Corners, 2008; Fig. 3: Infinity-Created Hollow Spaces, 2008. Installation view, Object Lessons: A Musical Fiction, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2010. Photo: Michael Salmon

Torben Tilly & Robin Watkins, Fig. 2: On Seeing Through Obstacles, Across Space and Round Corners, 2008. Installation view, Object Lessons: A Musical Fiction, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2010. Photo: Michael Salmon

Fitts & Holderness, Ása Ragnarsdóttir: Six Interviews in Reykjavik, 2010. Installation view, Object Lessons: A Musical Fiction, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2010. Photo: Michael Salmon

Ronnie van Hout, 1981- 1982, 2010. projected SD DVDs, silk screen inks on primed and painted stretched canvas. Installation view, Object Lessons: A Musical Fiction, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2010. Photo: Michael Salmon