TROVE

Sing Silent Songs

Matthew Krishanu, Wendy Mayer, David Miller, Paul Newman

Preview: 23 September 2010 6-9pm

Exhibition Open 25 and 26 September and 2 and 3 October 12-4pm

“Sing Silent Songs, they dream too long, their memories just stare”

The 60’s pop life took its toll on Scott Walker. Naturally shy and frightened of live performance, Walker tried many means of escape, even seeking refuge in a monastery. He was uncomfortable with the pop identity of the Walker Brothers and was keen to pursue more serious creative ambitions. In mid-1967, the band split.

Walker quickly embarked on his solo career much to the excitement of the many Walker Brothers fans. But Scott Walker was not about to return to the world he had just escaped; he began drawing more explicitly on the aesthetic and philosophical interests that had first fired his imagination about Europe (in particular Michel Legrand’s film scores and the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus). Between September 1967 and late 1969, he released four albums, masterpieces of a unique vision from which he emerged as an idiosyncratic existentialist crooner who paid scant attention to the period’s dominant pop music trends.

A key influence on Walker’s solo work was Jacques Brel, whose theatrical songs were a revelation to him. Brel’s social observation and biting satire, his ironic meditations on religion, death and love, his character descriptions, his sense of place and his dark romanticism all showed how elements traditionally associated with literature could be part of popular music; his linguistic flair proved that song lyrics could be poetry.

Walker credits the Belgian with unlocking his imagination and catalyzing his own writing. Inspired by the way Brel captured life’s complexities and confusion but presented no solutions, Walker focused on seemingly unremarkable, mainly urban characters inhabiting a world of kitchen-sink realism, struggling with day-to-day existence, often alone and damaged. Most importantly, Walker supplemented Brel’s realism with abstract touches, expanding simple narratives with jarring, surreal imagery: in Scott 2′s “Plastic Palace People,” cityscape and dreamscape merge, and the imaginary ascent of Billy, seemingly propelled by a balloon tied to his underwear.

The internal and external worlds of childhood daydreaming and flights of fancy explored in this song are inspiration the exhibition.

The show mirrors the mood and trajectory of the song, beginning with Matthew’s paintings. They evoke personal narratives and memory, set indoors in simple domestic environments, these moments describe quiet reverie and reflection. The subjects are solitary, silent, their minds elsewhere. Paul’s painted dreamscapes describe a dark whimsy, near abstractions of forgotten memories, places and dreams. The landscapes seem continually on the brink of collapse and regeneration. Wendy’s wax sculptures explore the transition between childhood and becoming an adult. The relationship between children and dolls, and children and adults/ their future selves inspire uncanny manifestations. David’s cabinets are inspired by furniture owned by parents and grandparents during his childhood. The teak finish and curved shape combine and confuse seventies and thirties styles, producing familiar but mysterious objects.

The show takes place on the very site that plastic was first created by Alexander Parkes in 1855. He called this material Parkesine. While no-one but Scott Walker could know what the song ‘Plastic Palace People’ is really about, we give the audience the chance to see this show within the original ‘Plastic Palace’.

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