Stage Fright

‘Stage Fright’ is a vinyl Record (LP) containing 11 sound and spoken word pieces. It posed the challenge of bringing together sound and spoken word performances by artists normally associated with visual imagery and with gallery exhibitions. It set out to provide the opportunity for artists to work ‘out of character’ and to experiment beyond their customary practices. Most of the performances were specially commissioned. The researcher also gave one of the performances and, with Urvesh Patel, designed and hand screen-printed the album covers.

The importance of this idea consists of providing the opportunity for artists to operate ‘out of character’ and one important aspect of the research activity was to scope the potential field of contributors and to commission a wide range of different types of performances. Part of the commissioning process was to identify contributors with a predisposition to tell narratives through aural means but who also had established their reputations in visual media. Therefore, Ian Breakwell read from his diary entry concerning a train journey in the only smoking coach, Bob and Roberta Smith played (his) own piano composition on the fickleness of friendships within the art world, Martin O’Neill found a sound equivalency of his collage-based illustration and the researcher made a ‘mouth piece’ recalling recording himself as a teenager on basic audio cassette technology. The other contributors were BiB, Bob Matthews, Lark, The Band of Nod, Mark Harris, Bell Helicopter, and Pete Lloyd.

The creative practice was brought together in the form of a limited edition vinyl album of 100 copies, one of which was acquired for the Tate Archive and Collection.