New Cuts Old Music
RICHARD REDDAWAY, GRANT TAKLE AND TERRY URBAHNRichard Reddaway, Grant Takle and Terry Urbahn collaborate on the installation New Cuts Old Music, an eclectic mix of found-object constructions and painted vinyl records saturated in mutated sounds and images.This band of artists acknowledge a DIY aesthetic: Takle mines once popular records that have become outdated and obsolete, Urbahn samples and re-mixes songs to bring a raw, occasionally nerve-wracking soundscape to the installations, and Reddaway’s objects are formless bodies made from recycled materials built around audio components.Informed by a shared love of popular music and rock ’n’ roll, the project derives from several exhibitions Reddaway, Takle and Urbahn have worked on together. These include most recently Band of Three at Gallery One in 2022, Tales from Elsewhere at PUCP/MAC Lima, Peru, in 2018 and Monkey, pee and the mask at Sawtooth AIR, Launceston, Tasmania in 2016.The three artists met at the Canterbury School of Fine Arts in the early 1980s and since graduating they have exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally.Richard Reddaway is an academic at the Massey University Whiti o Rehua School of Art in Wellington. His art has made photography an object and sculpture active, to explore areas as diverse as the body, Complexity Theory, identity, and the built environment. His latest obsession is making art ‘work’ to find a way out of neo-liberalism into the social through a contemporary understanding of the Baroque.Grant Takle lives in Otautahi Christchurch and works in the genres of painting, sculpture and mixed media installation and is interested in our ‘cultural compost,’ ranging from post-colonialism to the Mosque massacres and Covid, he has been using vinyl records in his work on and off for over 25 years.Terry Urbahn started his art career as a painter, in the mid-1990s he started creating multi-media interactive installations incorporating soundscapes and video borne out of his long-term interest in music (particularly rock) and performing in bands. Terry resides in Titirangi.