Introducing Paradise Version | A Solo Show by Tim Fishlock

A love letter to music and independent record shops, Tim Fishlock’s latest exhibition Paradise Version opens at the gallery on March 24. Inspired by the brief descriptions that vendors use to sell albums online, it’s a paean to the rich history and patterns of contemporary music and the cultural codes hidden in these miniature explanations.

Music has been a lifelong passion for Fishlock, and song titles and lyrics regularly crop up in his work. With its ability to conjure emotion and transport the listener to far away times and places, Fishlock believes it permeates life in ways other art forms can’t. “There are beautiful films, books, paintings, plays and sculptures but you don’t carry them through your life the way you do music. They can certainly move you but they don’t provide a backdrop to your existence in the way music soundtracks it,” he explains. Yet, as Fishlock is quick to point out, this passion is hard to put down in words.

“When writing about music, there’s a flexi-disc’s thickness between an earnest attempt at putting sound into words and unabridged arseholery,” Fishlock explains. “This show extols the efforts of others who tread that finest of lines: record store reviewers dropping vocabulary persuasive enough to make you hungry to hear the track they’re enthusing over.”

No stranger to the power of good text, Fishlock has been working with type for five years, notably creating bold statement pieces inspired by Tristan Tzara’s ‘cut-up technique’, in which the poet destroyed texts and then rearranged their words at random to devise completely new works. In some of Fishlock’s previous pieces, this translates as enigmatic bold-type text which – though it may seem random at first glance – conveys a story only limited by the viewer’s imagination.

For the artist, record store reviews are a variation on the theme, shorthand descriptions that can be read another way to create mini stories akin to flash fiction. But while each work is open to interpretation, Fishlock revels in the information stored in his words, akin to a kind of music’s secret code.

“DOOM LADEN AMEN ROLLER for instance, is indecipherable without knowing that the word AMEN refers to the four-bar drum break on the 1969 track Amen, Brother by the soul group The Winstons,” he says. “This is the most sampled break in the history of music and forms the basis of lots of early hip hop and the backbone to thousands of jungle and drum and bass tunes. ROLLER means a consistent loop of bass and/or drums that roll over and over throughout the track. DOOM-LADEN more obviously suggests the mood. So, from those four words I know I can expect a dark, rolling drum and bass record in the style of say, Ed Rush.”

The short, neat messages of Fishlock’s type explode out of painted surfaces that seemingly pulsate to their respective beats. Behind GARAGE FLECKED DUBWISE SWING, clouds of moody green darken and lighten; for FIERY BLUESY BEBOP, bonfire colours jostle for space. The effect is like a glimpse of synesthesia – especially if you have your own soundtrack playing in the background of your mind.

Paradise Version will be showing at Hang-Up from March 25. Each work will be accompanied by a QR code so that viewers can find out more about the piece, and a limited edition print will also be available. To find out more, please get in touch.