#unsung

An interactive antidote to the over produced and over sexualized female artist. 6th - 9th March 2014. Part of First Thursdays.

A collection of paintings by London born and Cornwall based artist Faye Dobinson, celebrating female musicians and vocalists who are representative of attributes not commonly celebrated in the current media. #unsung is an exhibition of painted portraits of female musicians and singers who have walked their own path. They are trailblazers, soul sisters, relentless and brave. Not playing to a male gaze but playing from a place of personal power. It ties in with international Womens' Week 2014. Featured musicians and singers: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Betty Davis, Elizabeth Cotton, Karen Dalton, Joan as Policewoman, Delia Derbyshire, Lisa Kekaula, Hanne Hukkelberg, Tammi Terrell, Nico and more.

Alongside Faye Dobinson's paintings, there will be the chance to hear many of the tracks these women made great. Putting faces to the names of the 'unsung sheroes'. In our culture of the often overproduced, over constructed and over hyped celebrity, these 15 portraits represent an alternative group of icons, both contemporary and from other eras. The show asks questions about the qualities that create a sense of the iconic and what it may be that the icons we have chosen show us about ourselves as a society. It has been an archaeological dig through musical history to seek and find an existing heritage that presents us with an alternative way to re-imagine and re-evaluate the role of the female musical artist. The viewer will be able to listen to the subject of each portrait by logging into Faye's playlist created for the show. There will also be projections.

Working from the limited visual information offered by the internet thumbnail image, the paintings became as much about the relationship between photography and painting as the genre of portraiture. The limited visual information offered by the thumbnail image became merely the starting point of a process that included Faye painting while listening to each of the artists' outpourings. Not just illustrations of faces, the paintings took on a life of their own resulting in a set of images imbued with a sense of the subject, of their aural output and the tussle between paint and painter. It's time to re-present these women as alternatives to a popular culture that is moving closer and closer to a controlling blandness and inoffensive 'pop pap' devoid of the raw, the honest, the brave and the unique. It's time to re-introduce true soul into the equation.