Quire 2011 Photographs

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Wojtek Bozyk

Wojtek Bozyk has been involved in independent filmmaking since 1990. A longtime New York resident he learned all levels of filmmaking as a production assistant, gaffer, assistant director, assistant cameraman, and director of photography.  He worked on various projects ranging from student thesis, shorts and features to music videos and documentaries. His directorial debut “Rockin’ Brooklyn” was shown on several film festivals in Canada, Portugal, Brazil, and Poland.

Lately he started his next project documenting Sunderland/North East music scene.  

Tom Hoad

I play guitar in the Sunderland based heavy rock band Ashes Of Iron. Our sound is organic, expressive, heavy, energised and melodic. (with a hint of blueberries!) Metal Hammer magazine described us as “Pissed Off Retro Rock”, which is fine by us. We have built up a body of work that collectively we are proud of and will hopefully find it's place in the hydra head of the rock/metal universe. Our debut album is available very soon, and we look forward to seeing what opportunities and adventures present themselves in the future.

For me personally the art work for our album was my biggest creative challenge to date. I was to produce the best work I had ever done for the worst possible clients, myself and my band mates. I wanted to avoid tested iconography and cliches, a lot of rock/metal bands can end up visually becoming a parody of their perceived persona. It is also a visual minefield in the sense that the wrong choice of imagery or design style can give the wrong clues to the music represented.

Rhea Sherriff-Hammond

Rhea Sherriff-Hammond is a song writer and singer who plays keyboards/synthesizers, and is drum machine programmer with new wave electro-pop-rock duo; BEAUX.

Rhea trained in fine art at Hull University, and has featured in solo and group exhibitions in the north of the country. She has recently been selected for ‘Young Artists of the Year Award’ at The Biscuit Factory, Newcastle. She takes influence from the arts as a whole; music, lyrics, literary themes. Also from the concepts of artists such as Rene Magritte, Barbara Kruger, the painterly skill and attention to detail of Dali and The Pre-Raphaelites, the compositional qualities of Ronald. B. Kitaj, and most evidently from Robert Rauschenburg and Sigmar Polke's brave, defiant, lack of expositional restraint in the use of mixed media.

Peter McAdam

I guess it all started for me when Punk came out, where anyone who knew three chords could get up and sing songs. I found this to be extremely liberating. In the mid 80’s I joined the Washington Music Collective which was a breeding ground for would be rockstars and disaffected experimentalists, myself being the latter, I formed Dadakopf which was in the spirit of the 1920’s Art movement Dadaism which was close to Punk in the philosophy of performance as a provocative event.

Dadakopf went on to win Surge 89 battle of the bands organised by the legendary Riverside venue held in Sunderland. One radio journalist described us as “miserable, gothic and not even German”.

Peter Hince

I started in the music industry at 18, working for the David Bowie organisation. I was Mick Ronson’s guitar roadie and also worked for Lou Reed and Mott The Hoople during that period. It was when working for Mott, I first met Queen, who were the support act on Mott’s UK tour and it was their first big break.

Around 18 months later I began working full time for Queen as they began recording the Night at The Opera album. I was principally Freddie and John’s roadie, then after a couple of years became head of the crew and worked with them full time until the end of their final tour in 1986, when I left the music business to start my career as a professional advertising photographer.

Peter Brewis

For a number of years I have been interested in the idea of using field recordings in composition. The idea of taking a certain place and time from itself and rehabilitating it into a new place and time, seems to me to get to the very essence of what makes studio based composition a unique process. The creation of a new reality.

"...studio recordings, record nothing. Pieced together from bits of actual events, they construct an ideal event."
Eisenberg, E. (2005) The Recording Angel. Yale University Press. p89

With each of these pieces I wanted to create a musical microcosm of a certain place and time. To condense a reality and use it to compose a hyper-reality; the ideal event. To find the music that people make as they go about their business and to compliment that music with my own compositional ideas. Practically, this would mean listening to and recording an environment over a period of hours, finding the rhythms, melodies and textures that interested me and then editing these hours into minutes, composing a short musical narrative of the event.

Lin Li

I am a practicing artist who also spends a lot of time making music. Coming from an academic and employment background in Social Sciences and disability service, I shifted my vocation to fine art and have been practicing as a full-time artist in Glasgow for over three years.  Music is a very significant part of my life.  I was a member of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra chorus for 18 years and am now a member of Russkaya Cappella which is an amateur a cappella group specialising in Russian choral music (www.russkayacappella.yolasite.com). 

My interest in music has influenced my artwork in a number of ways:

Les Opiola

Les (Leszek) Opiola is a photographer based in New York and this city remains his main object of interest. Before emigrating to Canada in the 1980’s he was active first as a musician and then as a band manger in the then emerging Polish rock scene. 

In the 90’s he documented the lives and traditions of the Sioux in South Dakota that culminated in an exhibition in The State Ethnographical Museum in Warsaw, Poland.  For the past few years, he has been photographing blues musicians and other artists influenced by them. He also directs and produces videos for up and coming bands. His work is on permanent display at BB King’s Club in New York and Chess Records Museum in Chicago.

The photographs in the exhibition were all taken in New York and have been selected and exhibited by Wojtek Bozyk.

Kenny Sanger

Kenny Sanger, a local musician who’d misspent his youth playing in bands around the City, took over The Bunker in 2000 with a former band member. Within a year or so the local scene was flourishing, and the new regime began an effort to support and promote the beginning of a new and exciting chapter in the musical life of the City. Now 11 years on, 30 years since it originally started, The Bunker is back in the hands of a Community Organisation, with Kenny at the helm, all ready for another 25 years.

The Bunker is an organisation which aims to develop music and arts in the City of Sunderland. As an entity which has acted as a platform for thousands of musicians and artists, many of whom have been catapulted to national and international stages, The Bunker is well recognised as a unique force: a gritty survivor which, against a backdrop of almost constant industrial decline, has provided a creative outlet for youth in Sunderland and contributed significantly to the North East region’s cultural economy.

The artwork is a collection of photographs documenting the history of The Bunker and music in Sunderland over the past 30 years with the addition of a DIY recording booth. It is influenced by the recording booths of the 60's where users could make their own record in just a few minutes.

www.bunkeruk.com

John Nichol

Born Aberdeen 1980, Graduated from Grays School of Art in 2001. Between 1996 and 2007 I focused on working with a musical project, The Needles, which gave me the opportunity to record 7 EPs, an album and travel widely in Britain and to the USA. Currently I am living in Glasgow where I have recently finished a Masters in Fine Art at the Glasgow School of Art and have just recorded an album to be released next year with The Hidden Masters.

James Sebright

I started playing in bands around 1997, playing guitar in a band called Reverie. We played on the Newcastle circuit, including gigs at the original Riverside, the Black Swan and the now deceased Egypt Cottage. We peaked with a short performance at the legendary Dingwalls in London. We thought we had arrived. Little did we know that we had peaked.

The demise of Reverie brought the start of Passenger who enjoyed a period of success in Newcastle, but like all bands it came to an end. This period coincides with when I took up photography. A need for a new outlet and a need for me to have a greater degree of control meant music took a backseat for a few years. However, I long since realised that you don't choose music; it chooses you, and so I was pulled back. I now play guitar in the duo Kid Kirby with Laura Kirby, and am also in the cinematic adventure that goes under the working title of Uber Gruber playing a debut set at The Star and Shadow in December. Playing music still affects me the way it did all those years ago. My heart quickens, my senses sharpen and the hairs on the back of my hands stand to attention. There is no escaping.

Geoff Heslop

Geoff studied at Newcastle College of Art and has always had an interest in the combination of music and visuals. He has always kept up both music and art, designing many album sleeves and illustrating some books (‘The Mocking Horse’ by Alan Hull).

Geoff is a practicing musician and performs in the band Ribbon Road where he sings and plays guitar, but he is also a record producer with over 100 album credits to his name. Working mainly in the acoustic scene, among the many musicians he has worked with are Bert Jansch, Alan Hull, Rab Noakes, Kathryn Tickell and Dick Gaughan. He also records his own music under the name Mission Shift.

David Sawyer

The band I play in is called The Chill Acoustic. My instrument is the Electrokord. It is hand built, based on the African thumb piano, tuned in major and minor triads, solid bodied with electromagnetic and piezo pickups, and played with fingers. The evolution of this instrument began in 1991 although I have been making instruments since 1966. My role in the band is harmony and rhythm. My fellow musicians improvise around me on electric guitar, electric viola and percussion. I also play with Heart n Soul and will be performing with them in the Clore Ballroom at the Royal Festival Hall 2nd Dec.

In 2007 I began constructing forms using bamboo and wood and applying household paints. Other materials include canvas, foam and steel. My building techniques have developed from instrument making, and studies in art and architecture.

Alicia Davies

Many years’ ago, after completing a Graphic Design degree at St Martin’s School of Art, Alicia Davies’ life was turned on its head by the power, vitality, and joy of West African music. In no time, an absorbing fascination became a career, which has created opportunities to perform on international stages with artists from around the globe.

During that time, she has repaired Peter Gabriel’s drums and written a book, “Finding the voice of your drum”, on fundamental Djembe techniques. She has had many years’ experience of facilitating both educational and corporate workshops alongside artists from West Africa, in venues around the world and the UK.