A Generous Act: A Collaboration with Music 2010
The Mattress Factory is pleased to announce A Generous Act This exciting and innovative project brings together a remarkably talented group of musicians from...
Description
The Mattress Factory is pleased to announce A Generous Act. This exciting and innovative project brings together a remarkably talented group of musicians from a varied geographical positions and a broad range of musical genres and interests to collaborate over a period of 16 days. During the first half of July, the Mattress Factory has converted the 4th floor of the museum into a practice area and fully functioning recording studio. The residency will culminate in a performance of the music the collaborators have generated during this period of time and the release a recording of this music on CD and vinyl formats.
Participants include: Karl Burke (aka Karl Him), Daniel Bracken, James Broder, Slim Cessna, Sean Carpio, Eileen Carpio, Lucinda Chua, Nathan Hall, Nina Hynes, Jeffrey Inscho, Simon Jermyn, Fabien Leseure, Benoit Leseure and Karla Stauffer.
The curator of this project, Mark Garry, has spent the past two years visiting Pittsburgh while undertaking a curatorial residence at the Mattress Factory, continuing a relationship that began when Mark undertook an artist residency for an exhibition in 2007. In addition to becoming much more aware of Pittsburgh’s broad musical history, Mark became aware of the diverse group of remarkable musicians who work at the museum. Mark has invited musicians from Berlin, Dublin, London and Brussels to collaborate with these musicians enabling a somewhat unique situation where the staff are directly involved in generating what is presented at the museum.
Equipment for the project was sourced from Dave Bjornson, who provided a mobile recording system consisting of a host of vintage equipment and instruments. The project will be mixed in Bjornson’s studio located at the New Hazlett Theater.
This project is organized by Mark Garry as part of the Mattress Factory’s Curator-in-Residence Program made possible by generous support from The Fine Foundation. Funding from Culture Ireland, Richard King Mellon Foundation, Allegheny Regional Asset District, The Heinz Endowments and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
Mark Garry received both his MA in Visual Art Practices and his BA in Fine Art from the Institute of Art, Design & Technology in Dublin. Garry’s work stems from a fundamental interest in observing how humans navigate the world and the subjectivity inherent in these navigations. While Mark uses a variety of media and mechanisms in his practice he primarily focuses on institution-based installations. These delicately considered site-specific installations are measured and quiet, requiring meticulous systems of construction. They combine physical, visual, sensory and empathetic analogues, creating arrangements of elements that intersect the space and form relationships between a given room and each other.