DARREN KNIGHT GALLERY
840 ELIZABETH ST WATERLOO NSW 2017 SYDNEY AUSTRALIA
TELEPHONE +61 2 9699 5353 FACSIMILE +61 2 9699 5254
email dmknight@ozemail.com.au

Darren Knight and lovers present an evening with SLAVE PIANOS
Drinks and matinee performance from 4 pm Saturday 15 May
ADAWO plays from 7.30 pm
Lovers – 1/108 Moor Street, Fitzroy. Tel. 03 9417 0057
Exhibition continues to 23 May, 1999.

SLAVE PIANOS is a collaborative venture undertaken by Danius Kesminas and Michael Stevenson in partnership with musical composers Neil Kelly and Rohan Drape. The two artists have worked closely with the composers in realising this project which seeks to document the history and practice of sound art. In particular SLAVE PIANOS concentrates on the music of artists who are known predominantly in the field of the visual arts.

SLAVE PIANOS is a study of the musical works of visual artists using the field of ethno-musicology. The process has been to recompose, arrange and transcribe the original recordings of artists music and score them for piano. The scores have been produced and compiled by Neil Kelly & Rohan Drape along with Stuart Campbell and pianist Barney McAll.

SLAVE PIANOS has also published the musical scores in the form of sheet music. At exhibition a full repertoire of sheet music accompanies the performance of the SLAVE PIANO itself, a player piano which mechanically reproduces the compositions.

Visual artists included in the SLAVE PIANOS repertoire are; Hany Armanious, Joseph Beuys, George Brecht, Louise Bourgeois, L. Budd, Tony Clark, Martin Creed, Joan Dubuffet, Katharina Fritsch, Marco Fusinato, Martin Kersels, Thomas Lawson, Bruce McLean, Daniel Malone, Nam June Palk, Martin Popperwell, John Nixon, Dieter Roth, Ross Sinclair, Ricky Swallow, David M Thomas, John Tinguely, Peter Tyndall & Ronnie van Hout

As part of a world tour which has already included the Museum Fridericianum (Kassel, Germany) and Stills Gallery (Edinburgh, Scotland), Kesminas and Stevenson present An Evening with SLAVE PIANOS at Lovers 1/108 Moor Street, Fitzroy.

The exhibition of sheet music and a matinee performance by the SLAVE Piano will begin at 4pm Saturday 15 May.

At 7.30 pm the same evening the Lovers loading bay will host the first live performance of ADAWO, Australia’s only Martin Creed tribute band. This English artist has made numerous forays into the musical domain and is included in the SLAVE PIANOS repertoire. Creed also performs in the art rock band OWADA. Martin Creed and OWADA performed at last years Sydney Biennial. As a rival event, ADAWOS performance has been timed to coincide with the opening of the Melbourne International Biennial. The band will perform covers of original OWADA tunes.

ADAWO are; Jon Campbell (vocals), Crab Fermanis (guitar), Dave O’Brien (bass) and Tom Zdanius (drums).

This performance will celebrate the launch of the SLAVE PIANOS CD which will be available on the night ($30).

After the Melbourne performance, SLAVE PIANOS will be exhibited in Auckland (Auckland Art Gallery, May/June 1999), Sydney (Darren Knight Gallery, August 1999), New York (Lombard/Freid Fine Arts) and Los Angeles (China Art Objects Gallery). SLAVE PIANOS tour is supported by the International Export and Touring Program of Arts Victoria.

SLAVE PIANOS would like to thank the La Trobe Music Department

darren knight + lovers present an evening with slave pianos
neil kelly + rohan drape
danius kesminas + michael stevenson
15 may - 23 may
drinks + matinee performance from 4pm sat 15 may
bands from 7.3Opm
lovers
1/108 moor street fitzroy
4 — 7pm fri to sun
tel. 03 — 9417 0057

with barney mcall, adawo + anti-jazz — special guests jon campbell, craig fermanis, dave o’brien, tom zdanius — special thanks to latrobe music department

Darren Knight and Lovers
present

An evening with

SLAVE PIANOS
Celebrating the Launch of the SLAVE PIANOS CD

featuring
live performances by the
QRS Pianomation Research Laboratory Player Piano, the Playola

Programme

SWALLOW 2.10
CREED 0.50
DUBUFFET 0.50
THOMAS 2.00
FUSINATO 6.15
BRECHT 0.08
LAWSON 2.00
TYNDALL 5.00
BEUYS/PAIK 0.50
KERSELS 3.00
NIXON 2.30
KELLEY 3.30
DE CLARIO 3.00
FRITSCH 2.00
CLARK 5.00
TINGUELY 2.40
MCLEAN 6.00
INTERMEZZO 4.30
BANK ROLL 3.00
BLOK 3.50
STRIKE CHURCH 2.40
BOURGEOIS 3.10
SINCLAIR 4.05
BUDD 0.25
ROTH 1.40

Artworkers: Danius Kesminus and Michael Stevenson
Recompositions and transcriptions by Rohan Drape and Neil Kelly
With performances and interpretatons by Barney McAll

art/text #67 1999 : REVIEWS

Slave Pianos LOVERS, MELBOURNE MAY 15 — MAY 23, 1999

Slave Pianos is an ongoing collaborative project by two Melbourne-based artists, Michael Stevenson and Danius Kesminas. It has already been exhibited at the Museum Fridericianum in Kassel and Stills Gallery in Edinburgh. Following its presentation at Lovers in Melbourne, it tours to the Auckland Art Gallery, Darren Knight Gallery in Sydney, Lombard/Freid Fine Arts in New York, and China Art Objects in Los Angeles.

The centerpiece of this exhibition is a player piano: a traditional piano fitted with a mechanical arm which rests across the keys and performs programmed music on demand. The play list consists of avant-garde or experimental “sound art” by artists ranging from Jean Tinguely and Louise Bourgeois to contemporary Australians and New Zealanders such as David Thomas and Ronnie van Hout. Most of the sound tracks were originally produced by visual artists and consequently generated in the context of gallery performances or by kinetic art works. With the assistance of Neil Kelly and Rohan Drape (musicologists from La Trobe University in Melbourne), Stevenson and Kesminas have uploaded original recordings of these transientart happenings to the computer and transcribed them as conventional piano scores. In effect, performances that were intended as one-off events have been rarefied and digitally re-recorded so that they can be played over and over again. Accompanying their electronic player piano is a range of merchandise which includes copies of the CD, a set of beautifully rendered sheet music, and an archival cabinet filled with collectable EPs, posters, production notes and photographs. This fan-boy paraphernalia helps to frame the self-playing piano as a ghostly incantation of unique historical happenings.

In his solo career, Kesminas has a reputation for mocking the seriousness of the art world with irreverent antics. For example, he often sets out to annoy his contemporaries by appropriating their work in ways that erode artistic aura. Given Kesminas’s modus operandi, it is tempting to view Slave Pianos as a puerile, Simpsons-style parody of avant-garde pretense. And this is reinforced by a LED text box installed above the piano which flashes snide remarks about art world “operators.” Stevenson is also concerned with making art about art, yet his practice is inflected with self-doubt and apprehension. In the past, for instance, he has reproduced quintessential images of twentieth-century art in pencil, but then withdrawn from the intimacy of these painstaking homages by presenting them as cynical investigations into the machinations of the art world. In contrast to Kesminas, who plays at being an uncouth rascal, Stevenson has styled himself as a paranoid white Protestant who knows too much to let himself enjoy simple pleasures.

From the perspective of Stevenson’s oeuvre then, Slave Pianos deals with the complicated sentiment of longing for an avant-garde purity which has been tarnished by critical knowledge and historical hindsight. But, by collaborating with Kesminas, the former has also been able to emphasize the showy element of his paranoid persona. Conversely, by sidling up to Stevenson, Kesminas has drawn attention to the anxiety that lies beneath the surface of his animosity. Working together, they express intensely tortured love/hate relationships with the art world. At face value, then, Slave Pianos is an intriguing, performative document of “sound art” in the twentieth century. But the particularly interesting aspect of this collaboration is the way that it explores a compromised economy of desire and fear.

Stephen O’Connell

SLAVE PIANOS Installation detail, Lovers, Melbourne, 1999.