FREE RADICALS

‘Did you have a blurb for it?’

Catherine’s lips turned up at the edges into a wry smile as she asked the question. My face turned upside down into a frown. ‘It’s bad enough that I have to make and install the work to a tight deadline, why should I have to write about it too? I can confidently say no one will read it.’
‘Get out, you grumpy git!’

It wasn’t the first time I’d outstayed my welcome in an art gallery. In this, my fifth decade, I was beginning to question many of the life choices I had made. Parts of my career felt like slow motion car accidents; you could see the obstacles coming down the road towards you, but no matter how hard you pulled at the wheels and levers, it was like you were on rails. The stress had become habitual and I’d ground through two of my teeth at night. Waking life had become more feverish too; my cat James had taken up an intense interest in Nietzsche, and during lockdown a milk carton obsessed with long-dead French existentialist philosophers moved in with me, an unwelcome guest holding me to account in my front room. I was haunted at every moment by a plague of fantasies.

Peter’s request for a “a single large projection with sound, two if you like” in return for a “meagre £200 fee” three weeks ago couldn’t have come at a worse time. I was preparing a major public commission for more wealthy patrons in Dublin, not to mention helping PAT test every electrical item in the studio before the end of the month to ease the path to a long-term building lease. At one point, I wondered if I’d been confused and Peter had meant December next year; many galleries program a year ahead. “Indeed, next month. Is this possible? I actually don't want you to think too much doing this. Just what your machines and your brain are still dribbling before the switch off - or shortly after.” But I liked Peter and, after all, I had taken all that Freelands money a year ago. They were probably always expecting something in return.

James had vomited all over my ancient Panasonic MX-12 video mixer that I used for what was the beginning of my creative practice: providing tightly-timed visual projections to accompany DJ sets in the provincial nightclubs of my youth. In doing so he had unleashed dark and powerful forces that worked back through a twenty-year personal archive of half-recorded, half-downloaded visual clips, unreleased music and unreliably-narrated memories to form the basis of this 40-minute commissioned work.
Text: Robin Price

Work on display

FINAL MIX 2.MP4 - Single channel video with 2.1 original soundtrack

TV NIGHTMARE.MP4 &  HORN NIGHTMARE.MP4 - Video diptych from forthcoming collection ‘Why make work in Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon?’

For sale: Artist’s edition of 10 mixtapes, ‘Music for Chin Strokers and Maths Teachers’ priced at £7 - All profits donated to Belfast Animal Rescue

Robin Price is an artist-inventor, trans-disciplinary physicist, musician and cat enthusiast. He holds an MPhys in Theoretical Physics from the University of Wales, Swansea and a PhD in Composition and Creative Practice from Queen’s University, Belfast. Recent solo exhibitions include Escape Sequence at CCA, Derry~Londonderry, Lambent Ambient, R-Space, Lisburn and Air of the Anthropocene at University of Atypical, Belfast. His work is held in the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s public collection and has been covered in Source Magazine, New Scientist and the Guardian.

Robin Price is part of the 3rd cohort of artists of the PS² Freelands Artist Programme 2021/22.

FREE RADICALS invites visitors to check their ability and urge to connect with the work. This could be through movement and dance or through associations and ideas in order to create a new element/ collaborative piece of work, by it through text, imagery, sound, coding, ambient design, movement…