Press Information
This is the first time Michael Curran has shown at Matt's Gallery and Look what they done to my Song is his first solo exhibition in London.
For this new commission, Michael Curran presents a site-specific installation exploring themes of spectacle, performance, narrative order and the dynamic that is created between sculptural composition and film.

Three songs - The Devil is Afraid of Music, What have they done to my song, Ma and How does it Feel to Feel? - were performed and filmed in the exhibition space of Matt’s Gallery, creating an open recording session and film set for three days. Through the subsequent editing process, the recorded material is subjected to radical temporal shifts through the use of overlays, speeding up, slowing down and repetition. This manipulation creates a series of rhythms, counterpoints and silences and explores the construction of song and narrative expectation, forming a drama (or crisis) of performance. The songs themselves are at stake, their survival questioned through these processes of translation.

The overall feeling is that of a séance in which the enquiry becomes what have they done to my song?

This exhibition is accompanied by a free publication, the 14th in the second series of Matt's Gallery booklets and includes a CD of the performances.
The film Look what they done to my Song will tour to the Arnolfini, Bristol from 17 September 2007 to 6 January 2008.

Michael Curran is funded by Arts Council England, London with the support of Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network.

Biography
Born Scotland 1963 Studied 1988-1991 BA Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, London; Postgraduate Diploma Electronic Imaging, Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee Selected Exhibitions 2006 Verisimimilitude, The Gallery, Wimbledon School of Art, London; FRENZY L’Art Decoratif D’Aujourd’hui, Metropole Galleries, Folkestone; Smuggle Project, Maastricht, Holland 2005 Screening Hochule fur Bildende Kunste; Screening Videoex-Zurich; Love In A Cold Climate praxisKUNST, Vienna; Margins to The Mainstream, Tate Britain; Fassbinder’s Jukebox, Camden Arts Centre; Appearance, Whitehall Waterfront, Leeds; Picture This, Touring, Britain; Nightwatchman – Roll it Back! Beaconsfield, London 2004 In Extremis, Videowall, Tate Britain; I Can See My Way Home, Picture This, Bristol; i can c my way home, Spacex Gallery, Exeter 2003 Rotterdam Film Festival, Rotterdam, Holland; Lux Open, Royal College of Art, London; Love In A Cold Climate, National Film Theatre, London; Tender Prey, Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam, Holland 2002 Better Than The Real Thing, Smart Space, Amsterdam, Holland; Silent Movies, Church, Amsterdam, Holland 2001 Dead Wall Reverie, Five Years Gallery, London; Closing / Close By, Spacex Gallery, Exeter; John, I’m Only Dancing, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh 2000 Other Side of Zero, Video Positive, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool; Nightclub Robberies, Rhodes Mann Gallery, London; The Red Room, Five Years Gallery, London

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