PJ HARVEY Recording in Progress is presented by Artangel and Somerset House
Somerset House New Wing London WC2R 1LA www.somersethouse.org.uk
16th January – 14th February 2015 tickets: www.somersethouse.org.uk/recordinginprogress
The Inland Revenue’s former staff gymnasium and rifle range, in the recently opened New Wing of Somerset House, will be transformed into a recording studio specially designed by Somerset House-based Something & Son. The studio will take the form of a box, displaying through one-way glass, PJ Harvey, her band, producers and engineers as a mutating, multi-dimensional sound sculpture.
Recording in Progress is a project conceived by PJ Harvey, in collaboration with Artangel and Somerset House, that will see her, together with longstanding producers Flood and John Parish, record her new album witnessed by small groups of visitors. Each group will experience something different, depending on what point in its development a particular song has reached and which of its elements are mixed live. Visits may coincide with the introduction of a new vocal, a specific bass line or it may hinge on the way percussion underpins another track. As in many working environments, some visitors might overhear a discussion or experience moments of silence when a new approach to the material is being considered, or may happen to be there just when the band decide to run through a complete song from the top.
“I want Recording in Progress to operate as if we’re an exhibition in a gallery. I hope visitors will be able to experience the flow and energy of the recording process.”
PJ Harvey
Recording in Progress is produced and presented by Artangel and Somerset House.
About The Artist
From the outset, PJ HARVEY MBE has commanded attention. She formed the eponymous bass/drums/guitar trio in 1991 in Dorset, England and by autumn had released the debut single, Dress, which set the stage for a highly anticipated album release the following month. Dry was hailed as an astonishing debut, not just in the UK but worldwide and especially in the United States, where Rolling Stone magazine named Harvey ‘Best Songwriter’ and ‘Best New Female Singer’.
Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea, Harvey’s fifth studio album, was released in October 2000, winning the Mercury Music Prize in 2001.
In 2011, Let England Shake won Harvey her second Mercury Music Prize, entering her into The Guinness Book Of Records as the only artist to have achieved this.
PJ Harvey has scored music for theatrical productions of Hedda Gabler, Hamlet and most recently Electra for the renowned Director Ian Rickson. She has also contributed score to a number of films, and most recently the BBC2 television series Peaky Blinders.
A multi-instrumentalist, Harvey is primarily a vocalist and guitarist while also an accomplished player of the autoharp. In addition to her musical career she paints, draws, sculpts, and writes poetry.
In December 2013, Harvey gave her debut public poetry reading at the British Library, and was a guest editor on BBC 4’s Today programme. PJ Harvey’s first book of poetry The Hollow of the Hand, created in collaboration with photographer/filmmaker Seamus Murphy, will be published by Bloomsbury in 2015.
In 2013 PJ Harvey was awarded an MBE for services to music.
In 2014 she was awarded an Honorary Degree in Music by Goldsmiths University.
About Artangel
ARTANGEL commissions and produces exceptional projects by outstanding contemporary artists n unusual spaces. Over the past two decades, Artangel projects have materialised in a wide range of different sites and situations and in countless forms of media, from film and video to sculpture and sound installations. Artangel has generated some of the most talked-about and contentious art of recent times, including work by Francis Alÿs, Clio Barnard, Matthew Barney, Jeremy Deller, Douglas Gordon, Roger Hiorns, Roni Horn, Ryoji Ikeda, Mike Kelley, Michael Landy, Steve McQueen, Susan Philipsz, Gregor Schneider, Daniel Silver, Rachel Whiteread and Robert Wilson.
