White Cubes/Dark Roots: Metal in the Galleries – Exploring Ongoing Connections Between Metal and Art Practices Through Two Exhibitions

Whilst perhaps ostensibly at odds, the spheres of metal music and the art world have been overlapping for some time. Exhibitions such as Black Thorns in the White Cube (Kansas City & Chicago, USA, 2012) and Altars of Madness (Luxembourg, 2015) brought together prominent contemporary artworks exploring metal themes. More recently, several exhibitions staged to coincide with the Home of Metal museum show (Birmingham, UK, 2019) as well as Satyricon and Munch (Oslo, Norway, 2022) and Death and the Devil (Düsseldorf, Germany, 2024) continued these connections. Having explored these contexts in my book Heavy Metal Armour (Intellect, 2022), I will use this presentation to discuss two recent exhibitions I have taken part in.

The paper will discuss the exhibitions Merchbau (2023, London, UK) and Metal M.O.R.P.H (2024, Berlin, Germany).

Merchbau (curated by Tom Cardwell and Juan Bolivar) presented a selection of artworks and artist’s multiples as an exploration of the intersection between artwork, merchandise, spectacle and gallery. The title referenced Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau, an evolving installation packed with sculptures that itself became a total artwork, before it was destroyed by bombing in 1943. The artworks in this show offered connections to metal culture through iconography that charts the human condition, and through the mercantile ritual of the merch stand. The gallery was transformed into the Merchbau, an immersive environment of art and metal.

Metal M.O.R.P.H (curated by Andreas Hachulla and Jan Brokof) was a large group exhibition exploring connections between metal culture and contemporary art. Featuring a range of artists whose works directly address metal culture, the curators aimed to examine ‘what makes one musical genre so appealing whilst it attacks the senses and regularly violates even the lowest standards of tastes?’ (Hachulla and Brokof, 2024).

Discussing my role in these two exhibitions (in the former I was curator and exhibitor, and in the latter exhibitor), this paper will reflect on the possible aims of artists and curators in these recent overlaps between fine art and metal. In particular, I will address whether these relationships are predominantly beneficial or problematic. I will also consider what implications these hybrid creative areas might have for wider discourses within metal music and its scenes. I will address critiques of metal-focussed art exhibitions discussed by Amelia Ishmael (2014) and my own analysis from Heavy Metal Armour (2022).

Key questions/points to consider:

- Why have artists and art audiences become interested in metal culture and attendant themes in recent years – is this part of wider art/cultural trends?
- What might be the implications of this for metal scenes themselves?
- Are these relationships beneficial or problematic?
- How can creative research move these areas of metal scholarship forward?

References:
Cardwell, T. (2022) Heavy Metal Armour. Bristol, Intellect.
Hachulla, A. & Brokof, J. (2024) Metal M.O.R.P.H. Press release.
Ishmael, A. (2014) ‘Black Metal in the White Tower: Metal’s Formless Presence in Contemporary Art’, in Wilson, S. (ed.) (2014) Melanchology: Black Metal Theory and Ecology. Winchester, UK, Zero Books.

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