An unusual and exciting opportunity to see the prolific Steve Stapleton’s art work within his local vicinity. These are his original artworks designed for album covers.
Steve lives locally, and quietly. Over the waters he is an acclaimed international artist who has a devoted following for his creative outputs. Steven Stapleton is a British artist and sonic adventurer and the only constant member for the past 30 years of experimental, avant garde band Nurse With Wound. Steve Stapleton is also a graphic artist and painter and has designed many album sleeves and book covers. Under the name, Babs Santini, Stapleton has created the artwork for most of the Nurse With Wound recordings, as well as for other artists, such as Coil, Sand, The Legendary Pink Dots, Current 93 and others.
With Stapleton’s art it is clear that there is a dark and irreverent vision, not without artistic precedents and contemporaries. The list begins but certainly doesn’t end with Goya, Kurt Schwitters, Max Ernst, Raoul Hausmann, the Dadaists, The Situationists and Martin Kippenberger, artists that defy easy categories and for whom conventions were meant to be upended, lovingly and unexpectedly, used and abused and battered into unconventional and sometimes rather beautiful shapes.
Stapleton is often seen as one of the pioneers of the British industrial music scene, alongside bands such as Throbbing Gristle, Coil and Psychic TV, although in his music he has explored a wide range of styles, including free-form improvisation, musique concrete, drone, folk and even Latin American Dance rhythms. Nurse With Wound is Stapleton’s main outlet for his musical and sound art works, occasionally in collaboration with other musicians such as Coil, Stereolab, SunnO))), Faust, Whitehouse and other underground luminaries. He has also appeared on records by other artists and worked as a producer. He has run the United Dairies record label since 1978, which apart from the Nurse With Wound output, released records by many experimental artists including Irish contemporary composer Roger Doyle’s avant ensemble, ‘Operating Theatre’, legendary improvisation group AMM and krautrock masters Guru Guru.
We are delighted to have some of Steve’s visual art work displayed in the Gort Framing Studio until December 2108.
This follows his recent one man show , Doing what we Are Told Makes Us free, and sleep concert at the Burren College of Art in May ,2017.
The next images are just a few of Steve’s many album sleeves, this first one uses an image captured on camera by our very own Gort Framer, Andreas Edler.
