Output details

Hats Off to Roy Harper:

The first of a number of practice-led research projects that explore the visual in relation to popular music.

This was the first of a series of practice-led research projects that explored aspects of the visual in relation to popular music history, placing both within a wider discourse concerning landscape and memory and their photographic representation. The investigation consisted of photographs made at the landscape sites of 1970s rock festivals, executed over specific time periods coincident with anniversaries of significant events that took place at these sites. The research outcomes offer a unique contribution to current debates surrounding the histories of popular music in particular respect to its changing status through the increasing retrospective of popular culture facilitated by the growing plurality of technologies and growing market for nostalgia. (As articulated by the work of writers such as David Toop, Simon Reynolds and Rob Young.) The research also contributes to the growing relevance of the histories of popular music across a range of practices including the visual arts. In particular the project ties the subject of popular music into established practices found in photography that explore aspects of place and memory as expressed through photography’s critique of the temporality of the event.

The photographs have been exhibited at internationally recognised contemporary arts venues including Ikon Gallery and Mummery Schnelle, London and the project was featured in the literary/photography journal The Drawbridge.

Earlier discourses concerning landscape and memory in photography were presented as part of the Land/Water and the Visual Arts conference held at Plymouth University in 2008. Of particular relevance is the work An English Field 2007 commissioned by Southampton City Art Gallery, which examines the agricultural/military landscape of Salisbury Plain. http://vimeo.com/54768643