Lisson Gallery

This special edition of the Lisson podcast ON AIR, entitled ‘Voices’, is dedicated to the artist Susan Hiller, who died earlier this year, aged 78. Hiller’s was a unique voice in contemporary art over the last five decades and succeeded in distilling many important truths and posing enduring questions about belief and humanity, often using the speech or the impressions of others, many of which were seldom heard.

While a memorial is being held at Tate Modern in the same week as this podcast is being released – as is a presentation of important early pieces, staged in a solo booth at the Frieze Masters art fair – this episode calls on many of her friends, colleagues and admirers from all over the art world to share their memories and interpretations of her life and work.

Among these recordings are interjections from Susan Hiller herself, taped at many live panels and conversations held over the last few years, including at Tate Liverpool, Frieze Art Fair, Art Basel, Lisson Gallery, the Jewish Museum in New York, the Model in Sligo, Ireland, as well as for Resonance FM, Slade School of Art, and Hiller's alma mater of Smith College in Massachusetts.

Our thanks go to the full list of contributors who contributed to this hour of discussion: Robin Klassnik, founder and director of Matt’s Gallery; Ann Gallagher, the director of Collections for British Art at Tate; Lynne Tillman, novelist, author and art critic; James Lingwood, the co-director of Artangel; the psychoanalyst Darian Leader; art historian and critic Jörg Heiser; John C Welchmann, the Professor of Modern Art History at the University of California, San Diego; Hans Ulrich Obrist, the Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries and the British artist Mike Nelson.

Brooklyn-based Spencer Finch recreates or approximates many different phenomena, both manmade and natural, visual and physical. Poetry is a great influence on his work and even a model for creating forms, experiences and installations that are as succinct and evocative as a string of words seemingly effortlessly stitched together, but to great effect. In this conversation with Mackie Healy, recorded in his studio in Gowanus, New York, Finch discusses his discovery and love of Dickinson’s work alongside that of WH Auden and James Schuyler among others.

In addition to being an artist-in-residence at Emily Dickinson's home in Amherst, Massachusetts, Finch has in the past made many homages to her poetry including the short verse, Before I got my eye put out, for which he measured the sunlight in her garden and recreated the effect of a passing cloud by means of fluorescent tubes covered in gel and suspended theatre filters. The resulting work is entitled Sunlight in an Empty Room (Passing Cloud for Emily Dickinson, Amherst, MA, August 28, 2004) (2004). He also created a monumental public work of coloured glass panels for the Morgan Library and Museum’s Gilbert Court, titled 366 (Emily Dickinson’s Miraculous Year) commemorating the year 1862, in which Dickinson completed 366 poems in 365 days. Although all of her 1,800 poems were published posthumously, Finch still consider Dickinson a rich archive of ideas, as well as an important moral guide: “Almost all of my titles of the past five years come from Emily Dickinson, it is an endless source.”

Poem excerpts:

WH Auden, The Shield of Achilles (1953); The Cave of Making (1965)

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), There's a certain slant of light; She sweeps with many coloured brooms; This is the land the sunset washes; The grass so little has to do; The outer from the inner; The brain is wider than the sky; A bird came down the walk; If I can stop one heart from breaking

In this episode, of Lisson ON AIR Art & Language (Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden) talk with Lisson Gallery’s Hana Noorali and Ossian Ward about its 40-year collaboration with the Red Krayola, a proto-punk band founded in Houston by Mayo Thompson. They discuss the largely improvised performances, the themes that went into these recordings – covering everything from conceptual art and activism to politics and philosophical thought – as well as how the first songs were written in residency at Robert Rauschenberg’s studio on Captiva Island, Florida, but only after Michael was detained by the CIA for carrying sensitive communist propaganda.

Combining text from these tracts, as well as from their Index 01, exhibited at Documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972, Art & Language provided the lyrics that were sung or chanted by, among others, Michael Baldwin, Ian Burn, Kathryn Bigelow, Charles Harrison, Pauline Harrison, Sandra Harrison, Christine Kozlov, Lynn Lemaster, Philip Pilkington, Mel Ramsden and Mayo Thompson. Having released many albums with Red Krayola since 1976, Art & Language continue to develop this extension of their practice in advance of a performance in New York this September.

Track List:

The Red Krayola with Art & Language, Gross and Conspicuous Error #8, 1976

Art & Language, Mayo Thompson, Jesse Chamberlain

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSJ7XwawZOc

The Red Crayola with Art & Language, Keep All Your Friends from Kangaroo?, 1981

Art & Language, Allen Ravenstine, Ben Annesley, Gina Birch, Lora Logic, Mayo Thompson, Epic Soundtracks

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_Ga7COGUn0

The Red Crayola with Art & Language, Portrait of V.I Lenin in the Style of Jackson Pollock, pt.1&2 from Kangaroo?, 1981

Art & Language, Allen Ravenstine, Ben Annesley, Gina Birch, Lora Logic, Mayo Thompson, Epic Soundtracks

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzlW3q1g9gY

The Red Crayola with Art & Language, Sighs Trapped by Liars, from Sighs Trapped by Liars, 2007

Art & Language, Elisa Randazzo, Sandy Yang-singers, Tom Watson, Mayo Thompson, Jim O'Rourke, Noel Kupersmith, John McEntire-drums

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JrbXylij9k

The Red Krayola with Art & Language from Gross & Conspicuous Errors, 1976

Art & Language, Kathryn Bigelow, Mayo Thompson, Jesse Chamberlain

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6cnevh5bPc

The Red Krayola with Art & Language from Gross & Conspicuous Errors, 1976

Art & Language, Kathryn Bigelow, Mayo Thompson, Jesse Chamberlain

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwT892J7STs

Art & Language, Postscript To SDS' Infiltration, Music-Language: Corrected Slogans, 176

Art & Language, Jesse Chamberlain, Mayo Thompson, Colin Bateman, Thomas Duffy, Wieslaw Woszczyk, Sandra Harrison, Pauline Harrison, and Lynn Lemaster.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH0_WE_kkp0

The Red Krayola with Art & Language from Gross & Conspicuous Errors, 1976

Art & Language, Mayo Thompson, Jesse Chamberlain

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwT892J7STs

Lisson...ON AIR is written and presented by Hana Noorali

In this episode, of Lisson ON AIR Art & Language (Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden) talk with Lisson Gallery’s Hana Noorali and Ossian Ward about its 40-year collaboration with the Red Krayola, a proto-punk band founded in Houston by Mayo Thompson. They discuss the largely improvised performances, the themes that went into these recordings – covering everything from conceptual art and activism to politics and philosophical thought – as well as how the first songs were written in residency at Robert Rauschenberg’s studio on Captiva Island, Florida, but only after Michael was detained by the CIA for carrying sensitive communist propaganda.

Combining text from these tracts, as well as from their Index 01, exhibited at Documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972, Art & Language provided the lyrics that were sung or chanted by, among others, Michael Baldwin, Ian Burn, Kathryn Bigelow, Charles Harrison, Pauline Harrison, Sandra Harrison, Christine Kozlov, Lynn Lemaster, Philip Pilkington, Mel Ramsden and Mayo Thompson. Having released many albums with Red Krayola since 1976, Art & Language continue to develop this extension of their practice in advance of a performance in New York this September.

Track List:

The Red Krayola with Art & Language, Gross and Conspicuous Error #8, 1976

Art & Language, Mayo Thompson, Jesse Chamberlain

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSJ7XwawZOc

The Red Crayola with Art & Language, Keep All Your Friends from Kangaroo?, 1981

Art & Language, Allen Ravenstine, Ben Annesley, Gina Birch, Lora Logic, Mayo Thompson, Epic Soundtracks

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_Ga7COGUn0

The Red Crayola with Art & Language, Portrait of V.I Lenin in the Style of Jackson Pollock, pt.1&2 from Kangaroo?, 1981

Art & Language, Allen Ravenstine, Ben Annesley, Gina Birch, Lora Logic, Mayo Thompson, Epic Soundtracks

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzlW3q1g9gY

The Red Crayola with Art & Language, Sighs Trapped by Liars, from Sighs Trapped by Liars, 2007

Art & Language, Elisa Randazzo, Sandy Yang-singers, Tom Watson, Mayo Thompson, Jim O'Rourke, Noel Kupersmith, John McEntire-drums

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JrbXylij9k

The Red Krayola with Art & Language from Gross & Conspicuous Errors, 1976

Art & Language, Kathryn Bigelow, Mayo Thompson, Jesse Chamberlain

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6cnevh5bPc

The Red Krayola with Art & Language from Gross & Conspicuous Errors, 1976

Art & Language, Kathryn Bigelow, Mayo Thompson, Jesse Chamberlain

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwT892J7STs

Art & Language, Postscript To SDS' Infiltration, Music-Language: Corrected Slogans, 176

Art & Language, Jesse Chamberlain, Mayo Thompson, Colin Bateman, Thomas Duffy, Wieslaw Woszczyk, Sandra Harrison, Pauline Harrison, and Lynn Lemaster.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH0_WE_kkp0

The Red Krayola with Art & Language from Gross & Conspicuous Errors, 1976

Art & Language, Mayo Thompson, Jesse Chamberlain

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwT892J7STs

Lisson...ON AIR is written and presented by Hana Noorali

Horwitz was born in 1932 and died in 2013, and lived and worked in Los Angeles. She studied graphic design in the early 1950s at Art Center College of Design and Fine Art at California State University, Northridge, in the early 1960s. In 1972 Horwitz received a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts, studying alongside John Baldessari and Allan Kaprow, participating in some of Kaprow’s ‘Happenings’, as well as creating her own performances.

In 1968, Horwitz submitted a proposal called Suspension of Vertical Beams Moving in Space to LACMA's ‘Art and Technology’ exhibition. The proposal was for a sculpture with eight moving beams, suspended in the air by magnetism and lit at varying intensities. The sculpture was never realised – the project, in the end, included work by only 67 male artists. Yet the attempt to graphically describe the movement of the beams with the rules and systems of eight that Horwitz developed for the proposal became the foundation for numerous bodies of work, including the Sonakinatography series, comprised of drawings, performances and musical compositions. In a 1976 article published in Flash Art, Horwitz described the system by saying “I have created a visual philosophy by working with deductive logic, I had a need to control and compose time as I had controlled and composed two-dimensional drawings and paintings. To do this, I chose a graph as the basis for the visual description of time...Using this graph, I made compositions that depicted rhythm visually.”

Sonakinatography is discussed in detail in this episode that takes the form of a conversation between Channa Horwitz’s daughter Ellen Davis and Lisson Gallery’s Ossian Ward in advance of an exhibition of her work in London, titled 'Rules of the Game'.

Former Ford Foundation scholarship student at the School of American Ballet in NYC and dancer with the Stuttgart Ballet Company, Ellen Davis has been teaching classical ballet internationally for over 40 years. She has also been the artistic director of numerous ballet and performing arts academies. In 1977 Ellen founded “Yoga of Ballet”, classical ballet taught with a mindful, living yoga approach that can be extended to all of life.

Ellen is the daughter of the late conceptual artist Channa Horwitz, and is the archivist and manager of her estate. As a long time collaborator with Horwitz she continues to choreograph, direct and oversee performances in conjunction with her mother’s work. Ellen created the text and sound track of Horwitz’s seminal work “At the Tone," which Horwitz published. “At the tone the time will be .... one moment past the point of seeing anything other than now”.

Ellen offers living yoga coaching and is an avid photographer. She writes about the creative process, living the timeless in time and new paradigm teaching and learning approaches.

Lisson...ON AIR is written and presented by Hana Noorali

Horwitz was born in 1932 and died in 2013, and lived and worked in Los Angeles. She studied graphic design in the early 1950s at Art Center College of Design and Fine Art at California State University, Northridge, in the early 1960s. In 1972 Horwitz received a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts, studying alongside John Baldessari and Allan Kaprow, participating in some of Kaprow’s ‘Happenings’, as well as creating her own performances.

In 1968, Horwitz submitted a proposal called Suspension of Vertical Beams Moving in Space to LACMA's ‘Art and Technology’ exhibition. The proposal was for a sculpture with eight moving beams, suspended in the air by magnetism and lit at varying intensities. The sculpture was never realised – the project, in the end, included work by only 67 male artists. Yet the attempt to graphically describe the movement of the beams with the rules and systems of eight that Horwitz developed for the proposal became the foundation for numerous bodies of work, including the Sonakinatography series, comprised of drawings, performances and musical compositions. In a 1976 article published in Flash Art, Horwitz described the system by saying “I have created a visual philosophy by working with deductive logic, I had a need to control and compose time as I had controlled and composed two-dimensional drawings and paintings. To do this, I chose a graph as the basis for the visual description of time...Using this graph, I made compositions that depicted rhythm visually.”

Sonakinatography is discussed in detail in this episode that takes the form of a conversation between Channa Horwitz’s daughter Ellen Davis and Lisson Gallery’s Ossian Ward in advance of an exhibition of her work in London, titled 'Rules of the Game'.

Former Ford Foundation scholarship student at the School of American Ballet in NYC and dancer with the Stuttgart Ballet Company, Ellen Davis has been teaching classical ballet internationally for over 40 years. She has also been the artistic director of numerous ballet and performing arts academies. In 1977 Ellen founded “Yoga of Ballet”, classical ballet taught with a mindful, living yoga approach that can be extended to all of life.

Ellen is the daughter of the late conceptual artist Channa Horwitz, and is the archivist and manager of her estate. As a long time collaborator with Horwitz she continues to choreograph, direct and oversee performances in conjunction with her mother’s work. Ellen created the text and sound track of Horwitz’s seminal work “At the Tone," which Horwitz published. “At the tone the time will be .... one moment past the point of seeing anything other than now”.

Ellen offers living yoga coaching and is an avid photographer. She writes about the creative process, living the timeless in time and new paradigm teaching and learning approaches.

Lisson...ON AIR is written and presented by Hana Noorali

Flat Time house located at 210 Bellenden Road, Peckham, London is the former studio and home of John Latham (1921-2006) a pioneer of British conceptual art, who, through painting, sculpture, performances, assemblages, films, installation and extensive writings, fuelled controversy and continues to influence artists today.

Latham transformed 210 Bellenden Road into a ‘living sculpture’ in 2003, naming it Flat Time House (FTHo) after his theory of Flat Time. A giant cantilevered book emerges through the glass facade of the building and onto the street. Inside, Latham designated specific rooms with anthropomorphic attributes of the living body, with the intention of communicating to visitors that Flat Time House exists as a living sculpture to be navigated as both a physical and metaphorical entity.

Until his death in 2006, Latham opened his door to anyone interested in thinking and talking about art. In 2008, the Latham family opened Flat Time House to the public as a gallery, an artist’s residency and centre for alternative learning that is currently under the direction of Gareth Bell-Jones. Flat Time house operates as a discursive space to explore John Latham’s practice, his theoretical ideas and their continued relevance today.

Gareth Bell-Jones (b. 1982) is the curator/director of Flat Time House. After graduating from the MA in Curating Contemporary Art at the RCA in 2010 he worked as curator for Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, for four and a half years. There he curated residencies, exhibitions, retreats, events, publications and an annual music festival with artists such as Ed Atkins, Michael Dean, Gustav Metzger, Elizabeth Price, Keren Cytter and Cally Spooner. From 2010-14 he was a regular visiting tutor to the RCA, Curating Contemporary Art Department. Previously he was curator of Tricycle Gallery, London from 2007-09. He has recently written catalogue texts for artists including Laure Prouvost, Marlie Mul, Barbara Visser and Agata Madejska.

Lisson...ON AIR is written and presented by Hana Noorali

Flat Time house located at 210 Bellenden Road, Peckham, London is the former studio and home of John Latham (1921-2006) a pioneer of British conceptual art, who, through painting, sculpture, performances, assemblages, films, installation and extensive writings, fuelled controversy and continues to influence artists today.

Latham transformed 210 Bellenden Road into a ‘living sculpture’ in 2003, naming it Flat Time House (FTHo) after his theory of Flat Time. A giant cantilevered book emerges through the glass facade of the building and onto the street. Inside, Latham designated specific rooms with anthropomorphic attributes of the living body, with the intention of communicating to visitors that Flat Time House exists as a living sculpture to be navigated as both a physical and metaphorical entity.

Until his death in 2006, Latham opened his door to anyone interested in thinking and talking about art. In 2008, the Latham family opened Flat Time House to the public as a gallery, an artist’s residency and centre for alternative learning that is currently under the direction of Gareth Bell-Jones. Flat Time house operates as a discursive space to explore John Latham’s practice, his theoretical ideas and their continued relevance today.

Gareth Bell-Jones (b. 1982) is the curator/director of Flat Time House. After graduating from the MA in Curating Contemporary Art at the RCA in 2010 he worked as curator for Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, for four and a half years. There he curated residencies, exhibitions, retreats, events, publications and an annual music festival with artists such as Ed Atkins, Michael Dean, Gustav Metzger, Elizabeth Price, Keren Cytter and Cally Spooner. From 2010-14 he was a regular visiting tutor to the RCA, Curating Contemporary Art Department. Previously he was curator of Tricycle Gallery, London from 2007-09. He has recently written catalogue texts for artists including Laure Prouvost, Marlie Mul, Barbara Visser and Agata Madejska.

Lisson...ON AIR is written and presented by Hana Noorali

This episode of Lisson...ON AIR focuses on the life and work Dom Sylvester Houédard, with contributions from Nicola Simpson, Charles Very, Nicholas Logsdail and Matt O’Dell.

Widely recognised as one of the leading theorists and outstanding international practitioners of concrete poetry, Dom Sylvester Houédard (1924–1992) is firmly rooted in Lisson Gallery’s early history, with his first solo exhibition held at the gallery during its inaugural year in 1967. A practicing Benedictine priest and noted theologian, Houédard, also known by his initials ‘dsh’ or ‘the Dom,’ wrote extensively on new approaches to art, spirituality and philosophy, and collaborated with artists such as Gustav Metzger, Yoko Ono and John Cage.

Nicola Simpson is a curator and researcher at Norwich University of the Arts, researching ‘right mind-minding: the transmission and practice of zen and vajrayana buddhist method practices in the poemobjects of dsh 1963–75’. Recent curatorial projects on Dom Sylvester Houédard include: ‘Performing No Thingness, dsh, Ken Cox and Li Yuan-chia’, East Gallery, NUA, (2016), ‘The Cosmic Typewriter, The Life & Work of Dom Sylvester Houédard’, at The South London Gallery, (2012), ‘The Yoga of Concrete’, The Gallery, NUA,(2010). She is editor of Notes from the Cosmic Typewriter: The Life and Work of Dom Sylvester Houédard (Occasional Papers, 2012), Dom Sylvester Houédard (Ridinghouse, 2017).

Charles Verey has been working on a biography of Dom Sylvester Houédard since 2005. Between 1966–69 Verey organised exhibitions with Dom Sylvester, John Furnival and Ken Cox at Arlington Mill in Gloucestershire. He has contributed to Notes from the Cosmic Typewriter (ed., Nicola Simpson, 2012) Dom Sylvester Houédard (ed., Andrew Hunt & Nicola Simpson, Ridinghouse, 2017) and co-editor of ‘The Kiss’: ten talks by Dom Sylvester to Beshara students, 1986– 1991 (ed., Jane Clark and Charles Verey, Beshara Publications, Autumn 2018) including a full biographical preface.

Nicholas Logsdail is the founder of Lisson Gallery, one of the most influential international contemporary art galleries in the world. The gallery celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2017 with a major group exhibition, ‘Everything at Once’, staged at Store Studios in partnership with The Vinyl Factory, as well as with a comprehensive book, entitled ARTIST | WORK | LISSON, documenting more than 500 exhibitions since 1967, the year in which the gallery also staged its first shows of Dom Sylvester Houédard.

Matt O’dell is Lisson Gallery’s archivist and an artist.

Lisson...ON AIR is written and presented by Hana Noorali.

Image © Clay Perry, England & Co

This episode of Lisson...ON AIR focuses on the life and work Dom Sylvester Houédard, with contributions from Nicola Simpson, Charles Very, Nicholas Logsdail and Matt O’Dell.

Widely recognised as one of the leading theorists and outstanding international practitioners of concrete poetry, Dom Sylvester Houédard (1924–1992) is firmly rooted in Lisson Gallery’s early history, with his first solo exhibition held at the gallery during its inaugural year in 1967. A practicing Benedictine priest and noted theologian, Houédard, also known by his initials ‘dsh’ or ‘the Dom,’ wrote extensively on new approaches to art, spirituality and philosophy, and collaborated with artists such as Gustav Metzger, Yoko Ono and John Cage.

Nicola Simpson is a curator and researcher at Norwich University of the Arts, researching ‘right mind-minding: the transmission and practice of zen and vajrayana buddhist method practices in the poemobjects of dsh 1963–75’. Recent curatorial projects on Dom Sylvester Houédard include: ‘Performing No Thingness, dsh, Ken Cox and Li Yuan-chia’, East Gallery, NUA, (2016), ‘The Cosmic Typewriter, The Life & Work of Dom Sylvester Houédard’, at The South London Gallery, (2012), ‘The Yoga of Concrete’, The Gallery, NUA,(2010). She is editor of Notes from the Cosmic Typewriter: The Life and Work of Dom Sylvester Houédard (Occasional Papers, 2012), Dom Sylvester Houédard (Ridinghouse, 2017).

Charles Verey has been working on a biography of Dom Sylvester Houédard since 2005. Between 1966–69 Verey organised exhibitions with Dom Sylvester, John Furnival and Ken Cox at Arlington Mill in Gloucestershire. He has contributed to Notes from the Cosmic Typewriter (ed., Nicola Simpson, 2012) Dom Sylvester Houédard (ed., Andrew Hunt & Nicola Simpson, Ridinghouse, 2017) and co-editor of ‘The Kiss’: ten talks by Dom Sylvester to Beshara students, 1986– 1991 (ed., Jane Clark and Charles Verey, Beshara Publications, Autumn 2018) including a full biographical preface.

Nicholas Logsdail is the founder of Lisson Gallery, one of the most influential international contemporary art galleries in the world. The gallery celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2017 with a major group exhibition, ‘Everything at Once’, staged at Store Studios in partnership with The Vinyl Factory, as well as with a comprehensive book, entitled ARTIST | WORK | LISSON, documenting more than 500 exhibitions since 1967, the year in which the gallery also staged its first shows of Dom Sylvester Houédard.

Matt O’dell is Lisson Gallery’s archivist and an artist.

Lisson...ON AIR is written and presented by Hana Noorali.

Image © Clay Perry, England & Co