This is Andrews bio.
Andrew Pierre Hart’s practice is inter-disciplinary based in painting. The main focus of his work is the symbiotic relationship between sound and painting. His practice is an ongoing rhythmic research and play of improvised and spontaneous generative processes, through various mediums: sound, video, performance, found object and image, language, photography and installation, and themes of: improvisation, collective memory, cross-modality, spatialisation, musicality and rhythmology .
Andrew studied MA Painting at The Royal College of Art 2017-19 and BA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art 2014-17. Hart is an associate lecturer on the Painting pathway at Camberwell College and Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art .
Andrew is currently showing at Mixing it up Painting today at The Hayward Gallery. He also presented ‘S:3 E:3s The Alter-native Trace ( Bass and Space)’ a series of paintings at Frieze London. He was part of ArtAngel’s ‘Thinking Time ‘ 20/21 and a resident at Beaconsfield Gallery.
Liquin Live ( Andrew Hart & Janek Nixon) in Session
I listened to this live performance with Andrew was involved in. It’s described as.
2 x laptops-hand-made module – mixer – amp – audio recorder – drum machine – hand-built speakers-sound seat.
I wonder how these speakers were built according to specifications? and the actual performance context. There isn’t a lot on this except a 1hour audio clip which I listened to for about ten minutes.
The sounds were captivating. Sometimes vocals would come in and out of the recording. It felt emotional and perhaps improvised? It would be cool to see the actual set-up as it sounds really interesting, especially the handbuilt speakers.
Sound Painting
I found a section on his website called Sound Paintings. I read that it was his reaction to sometimes albums other times his friends improvising on their instrument. He wants to capture his emotional state reacting to the music.
I found these paintings really simple on the surface but I felt they conveyed a deeper meaning. I would like to know what the source was that made him paint these.
I find this sort of idea of transmuting one thing into another really interesting. Reminds me of the other work of Åsa Stjerna. She did sonifying the data of scientists into sounds for installations. This is the reverse. Taking audio and morphing It into something else. I’m curious to hear how this was developed.
Post Lecture Reflection
Andrew begins his lecture by speaking on his love for sounds, the rattle of a bike. The turntable and the record, he states he loves the shape and design of these two things.
One of his earliest works would be that he would find spaces that were empty in university. And he wanted to almost do graffiti but not leave marks or stains. He was interested in the space that was dormant and then he would throw balls down a slanted flooring to hear the acoustics in the room. He was interested in space and how it reacts.
Another piece was a video he filmed in Amsterdam with bikes riding past. It felt like a static sound walk. Tuning in and out were themes in his ideas. The space became something alive and you can see and feel the rhythm. How do we make our own sounds then? That’s the next step for him.
The ideas of listening, through the pandemic. The black lives matter, the storming the capital. Were all important themes in his work over lockdown when he received his artist residency.
He was given an arts residency during the pandemic and he wanted to relate it to a few things, one was the idea of the past and improvisation. Using stones as cavemen were improvisation. He invited a few artists to collaborate in these spaces. People that hadn’t performed in over a year.
He invited the artists to sit down and communicate without speaking. He would ask questions and they would reply without lyrics. The reply was interesting, he felt and knows that music is another language and it was interesting. carving out space, if you’re trying to create a new space. Try to shape it to be different. he would think about pathways and how we can relate and connect through doing. And to him, sound arts is a new pathway in a way especially in fine arts.
I found Andrews work captivating. He uses sound in a different context to the other practitioners so far and combines it with his other disciplines. Painting and turning his favourite albums into artwork was a good idea. Other uses of sounds in spaces and installation work I haven’t seen before.
I think one of the most interesting parts of his lecture was his self-awareness. As someone like himself who isn’t formally trained in audio, he really approaches it completely from fine art. An almost relieving thought process occurs when there are no boundaries set.