Sound Mechanic Neil Feather (Baltimore, US) has been creating radical and unusual musical instruments for forty-two years, and is increasingly known outside of Baltimore as one of the most original musical thinkers of his day. His instruments each embody uniquely clever acoustic and engineering principles, and are visually arresting. The music he plays on the instruments is equally original, embodying new principles and resulting in a nearly alien idiom of music. A founding member of Thus, The Official Project, Mugwhump, Elephantitans as well as the leader of Aerotrain, he has a long history of collaborative projects and solo concerts.
Neil Feather has taught a sound sculpture course at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore MD. He has created exhibits for Port Discovery, Baltimores Childrens Museum and many other museums. He works as a Hearing Care Professional.
Neil Feather is a pure aberration, no one could have guessed him. After the initial shock of his sensibility wears off, there is a deeper disturbance, as one realizes that his work really DOESN'T relate to something else you have seen or heard. It is deep individuality. Between the novelty and power of his innovations (his use of forced contrary motion, Doppler-shifts, and standing waves within instruments to name just a few) to the goofy darkness of his aesthetic, there is a strange hatch into a land of sublime, divine music that has no choice but to be itself. Neil Feather is a true genius. - John Berndt
Tony Green
Exhibition of Tubular Poems – works varying “in size between inners of lavatory paper and metre long inners of newsprint etc, and a few even longer from rolls of cloth, blinds, etc.”
Tony Green has been reading poetry at readings in NZ since 1978. He worked alongside Phil Dadson in the Scratch Orchestra in the 70s, and for several years in the early 80s worked in a duo with Wystan Curnow. Green has published nine chapbooks of poems and published poems in NZ mags Morepork, Parallax, Splash, And, A Brief Description of the Whole World.
He was a contributing editor to Parallax, and as an editor of Splash he was largely responsible for getting mss from contemporary US poets — especially those associated with L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine. Green was founding Professor of Art History in Auckland University in 1969 (retired 1998) & founding editor of BONZAH – the Bulletin of New Zealand Art History. He has published numerous reviews & essays on NZ art, and two books on French 17th century painter Nicolas Poussin.
“The poem tubes are (usually) one-offs. They are tools for reading long unpunctuated texts – parts of an endless stream of alternating words & silences between them.” – Tony Green
Exhibition opens Thursday 5 March, 5.30pm start – performances by Neil Feather and Tony Green from 6.30pm.
Runs until Saturday 28 March
Special thanks to CNZ and Becks for their support
