“The Origin of Painting” by Disinformation - Wrexham Arts Centre, October to December 2006
Brochure text - An exhibition by electronic music and audiovisual art project Disinformation, which takes its title from a live and highly interactive sound and light installation that references the Greek myth of “The Corinthian Maid, or The Origin of Painting”. The installation enables visitors to photograph their own shadows, and to paint with light, directly onto the surface of the exhibit, to a soundtrack of live electromagnetic noise. Also includes the pieces “Blackout” by Barry Hale, “The Analysis of Beauty”, “Spellbound” and the first public exhibition of test images for the new Disinformation project “Fire in the Eye”.
With some minor variations in the content, versions of the same Disinformation solo exhibition toured to 9 UK regional art galleries - Fabrica Gallery (Brighton, Nov 2001), Huddersfield Art Gallery (Jan 2003), Ashcroft Arts Centre (Fareham, Sept 2003), Quay Arts (Isle of Wight, Feb 2004), South Hill Park (Bracknell, April 2004), Derby Quad (June 2004), Midlands Arts Centre (Birmingham, July 2005), Wrexham Arts Centre (Oct 2006) and Saltburn Artists Projects (January 2007). Four of these exhibitions were funded with a special grant from the Arts Council’s then National Touring Programme.
Special thanks - for helping organise and fund the Disinformation touring exhibitions - to Jonathan Swain, Liz Whitehead, Matthew Miller [RIP], Robert Hall, Nicola Stephenson, Bronac Ferran, Tony White, Richard Humphreys, Genevieve Wilk, Carol Palmer, Rob Thrush, James Lucas, Fiona Burn, Jo Johnson, Eluned Myher, Louise Fedotov-Clements, Alex Boyd, Tracy Simpson and Lauren Healey.
In more detail -
“The Origin of Painting” [pictured] is an electromagnetic sound and optokinetic light installation, which originally premiered under the title “Artificial Lightning” in the “Sonic Boom” exhibition at London’s Hayward Gallery, April 2000, curated by David Toop and Fiona Bradley. The “Blackout” (Sound Mirrors) video [pictured] was filmed in 1997 by Barry Hale, and featured as a projected back-drop in numerous Disinformation concerts, talks and DJ sets, etc, before forming the centrepiece of the Disinformation “Blackout” exhibition, which toured to the Broadway Media Centre (Nottingham, Oct 1999), Waygood Gallery (Newcastle, Nov 1999) and ICA New Media Centre (London, March 2000). “The Analysis of Beauty” is an optokinetic oscilloscope artwork, which premiered in the “Noise” exhibition at Kettle’s Yard gallery (Cambridge, Jan 2000) curated by Adam Lowe and Simon Schaffer. The “Spellbound” video installation is “An Allegorical Portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer”, which was exhibited in proposal form only (as a paper document) in the Raphael Cartoon Room at The V&A (London, 3 Nov 2000), and at the Royal Society of Sculptors (London, March 2001), before the “Spellbound” video was commissioned by Fabrica gallery (Brighton) for the first “proper” Disinformation solo exhibition in November 2001 (see below). The “Fire in the Eye” photographs [pictured] (aka “Painting with Electricity”) were created in 2004, premiering at the Wrexham Arts Centre in 2006. The 35mm cinema version of “Fire in the Eye” was commissioned in 2007, premiering at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2008, in a screening programme curated by the film scholar Kim Knowles.
Fabrica (2001) - www.flickr.com/disinfo/7099389881/
Saltburn (2007) - www.flickr.com/disinfo/2402253500/
Saltburn (2007) - www.flickr.com/disinfo/2402317598/
The “Blackout” video is based on Sound Mirror imagery that features in the “Antiphony” 2xCD packaging, published by the record company Ash International in 1997, featuring photographs by Julian Hills, and in the “Antiphony Architectural Supplement”, featured in Sound Projector magazine, issue 6, published in 1999.
Antiphony (1997) - www.flickr.com/disinfo/6896902030/
