Music / Stewart Geddes
Collaboration between Radiohead’s Philip Selway and artist Stewart Geddes exhibited at RWA
Musician and Radiohead drummer Philip Selway, who has released and toured three previous solo albums – Familial (2010), Weatherhouse (2014) and the film soundtrack Let Me Go (2017) – is back in 2023 with Strange Dance, the result of a longstanding collaboration with his friend, Bristol artist and RWA academician, Stewart Geddes.
In lockdown Zoom conversations, the two friends began to form a creative exchange – Selway developing new music from his Oxfordshire home, and Geddes painting from his quiet haven at BV Studios in Bedminster.
Along with Selway’s solo album of the same name, Geddes created eight abstract paintings for the Strange Dance project that emerged concurrently, “in parallel to each other, as a wordless dialogue”. Four of the resulting images are being used as the artwork for the album.
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Stewart Geddes, Canaro, part of the Strange Dance collaboration with Philip Selway (122x122cm; acrylic on canvas, cover to box set 1) – photo: courtesy of RWA
In the early stages of the collaboration, Selway would send over sections of the music as he was writing it; Geddes would show his paintings as they began to take shape, and when they were permitted, during breaks in the lockdown, the duo would meet to discuss their progress.
As a painter, Geddes works horizontally, with his canvases on the floor. With this project, he made various technical decisions that helped the elements of musicality to seep into the work.
“With no undercoat on the ground, it’s a really absorbant surface,” he reflects, in conversation with Selway. “[I can] invite colours to bleed and to take up the form that they want to take, so it’s a process of negotiation rather than complete control with the medium.”
“I love that description,” agrees Selway. “There’s an element where you have to let go of control and let it take its own path, and that’s kind of how it’s been with the music as well.”
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Strange Dance also includes dance from choreographer Simone Damburg Wurtz, who performed alongside Siobhan Davies, Liam Francis and Kenneth Tharp on the project.
There is a digitally animated video of Sakram, one of Geddes’ paintings, made by Uncommon Creative Studio. And a filmed conversation between Selway and Geddes, produced by Novella Stories, completes the exhibition.
Strange Dance is the RWA’s Kenny Gallery on March 14-May 1, and is free to attend. It runs in parallel to the RWA Season of Photography exhibitions, including Jem Southam’s A Bend in the River and the RWA Photo Open. For more information, go to www.rwa.org.uk.
Philip Selway is at Bristol Thekla on May 19. Tickets are available via www.gigsandtours.com.
Main photo: courtesy of RWA (Stewart Geddes: Finnador – also used as the album cover for Strange Dance)
Read more: RWA marks season of photography with four concurrent exhibitions
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