The Post-Punk era is repackaged for consumers through filters that construct half-truths and diminishing echoes of original events, leaving historic tracks conflicted in their communication with listeners. Presenting works as a live performance installation, Nicholas Bullen, Justin Wiggan and Cathy Wade focus on the role of nostalgia as an element that obscures, one that needs readjustment, so that noise can take on the forms that drive it. Drawing from archives of women in Post-Punk music, personal memory through phonic reflective processes and obfuscation of the initial narrative to explore the impact of capitalism on music Noise and Nostalgia focusses on addressing this disparity.

Nicholas Bullen is an artist and composer based in Birmingham, England. Working across a range of media including sound, text, film, installation and performance, his work explores time and place through process (with a particular focus on the transmutation of elements and systems of communication). He has a history of composition in sound and music spanning more than 30 years (beginning as a founder member of the ‘extreme’ music group Napalm Death at the age of 13), releasing over 40 recordings and performing internationally (both solo and in collaboration). Bullen’s work has been performed or exhibited both in the UK including Tate Britain, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Hayward Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, Chisenhale Gallery and Arnolfini Gallery and internationally at Art Basel, White Columns, Creative Time, Schirn Kunsthalle, and MACBA.

Cathy Wade presents research on the agency of female musicians in the Post Punk era through the representation of the seminal independent publication Benightment and archival sources.  The work will be on view throughout the exhibition season 6-21 May.  Cathy Wade is an interdisciplinary artist who manifests works through collaboration, writing and publication. Her work is disseminated online and through material objects in formal and informal networks. Recent projects include Delineator and the #ShaunRyderBeermatShow. She has exhibited extensively in the UK and internationally working with galleries and projects including Werk, Vertigo Gallery, Vivid, Toomey Tourell Gallery, Sluice, Printed Matter, Newlyn Art Gallery, Ikon, Ech-O-Cham-Ber, Curfew Tower, Capsule, Clarke Gallery & A3 Project Space. She is currently Artist in Residence with Longbridge Public Art Project and is the BCU Wheatley Fellow for 2015-2016.

Justin Wiggan presents UNKNWNPLRSRS from his latest work, Plastik Tonez. A special phonic reflective process of understanding the power of nostalgia, memory and influence, this series of 10 episodes presented by Wiggan is an attempt to de-construct the resonating values of ten influential records in the artist’s life. UNKNWNPLRSRS  also features a text by Jamie Holman and film by James Ockelford. Justin works through sound, performance , text and object, embracing a sense of evolution and eradication of a problem that goes way beyond cultural breakdown. He is concerned with the ‘end of a system’ through a practice which engages with the redevelopment of the sense of hearing as a learning tool and an awareness machine.

Supported by North Brewery Co. and featuring a unique bottled edition of Transmission IPA.

Venue: Vivid Projects.

Part of Museums at Night 2016