Michael Curran, Look What They Done to My Song, 2007. Production still courtesy the artist and Matt's Gallery, London.
Michael Curran, Look What They Done to My Song, 2007. Production still courtesy the artist and Matt's Gallery, London.
Michael Curran, Look What They Done to My Song, 2007. Production still courtesy the artist and Matt's Gallery, London.
Michael Curran, Look What They Done to My Song, 2007. Production still courtesy the artist and Matt's Gallery, London.
Michael Curran, Look What They Done to My Song, 2007. Installation view courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.
Michael Curran, Look What They Done to My Song, 2007. Installation view courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.
Michael Curran, Look What They Done to My Song, 2007. Installation view courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.
Michael Curran, Look What They Done to My Song, 2007. Production documentation courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.
Michael Curran, Look What They Done to My Song, 2007. Production documentation courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.
Michael Curran, Look What They Done to My Song, 2007. Production documentation courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.
Michael Curran, Look What They Done to My Song, 2007. Production documentation courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.
Michael Curran, Look What They Done to My Song, 2007. Production documentation courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.
Michael Curran, Look What They Done to My Song, 2007. Floorplan courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.
Michael Curran, Look What They Done to My Song, 2007. Research image courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.
Michael Curran, Look What They Done to My Song, 2007. Production still courtesy the artist and Matt's Gallery, London.

Michael Curran, Look What They Done to My Song, 2007. Production still courtesy the artist and Matt's Gallery, London.

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Michael Curran

Look What They Done to My Song

19 September – 18 November 2007

Copperfield Road

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?