Paul Rooney | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1967 (age 56–57) |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupation | Artist |
| Notable work | Lucy Over Lancashire |
| Awards | Northern Art Prize (2008) |
| Website | www |
Paul Rooney (born 1967 in Liverpool) is an English artist who works with music and words, primarily through installations and records.[1]
He studied painting at Edinburgh College of Art.[2] In the late 1990s his art practice shifted from painting to video and music, initially with the artist group Common Culture and then the band Rooney.[3][4] His work later focussed on sound and music within video works, installations and performances.[5][6][1]
His art works often explore the difficulties inherent in the representation of place, mixing unreliable narratives of personal experience and urban myth.[7][4]
Awards include an Abbey Award in Painting at The British School at Rome in 1995,[2] Art Prize North in 2003,[8] [9] the Northern Art Prize in 2008,[10] and the Morton Award for Lens Based Work (2012).[11] His works have been purchased for the Arts Council Collection[12] and through the Contemporary Art Society Acquisitions Scheme.[13]
The three CD music albums released from 1998 to 2000 under the band name Rooney (not the later US band of the same name)[4] [3] were broadcast by BBC Radio 1 (John Peel Show) amongst others,[14] and the track Went to Town reached number 44 in John Peel's Festive Fifty of 1998.[15][16] Rooney became a live band in time to record a Peel session in 1999.
Paul Rooney continued to perform or work with other musicians in the early 2000s, such as The NWRA House Band, touring a 'variety night'[17] and a 'rock opera' amongst other performance projects.[18] His gallery works — now primarily sound and music based installations but also including video and writing — developed through commissions for organisations such as Sound and Music[19] and Film and Video Umbrella,[20] and through a period of residencies and fellowships at institutions including Durham University;[2] University of Dundee;[21] Tate Liverpool;[5] Proyecto Batiscafo, Havana;[22][23] Oxford University;[24] University of Melbourne;[24] and University of Wolverhampton.[5]
Electric Earth: Film and Video from Britain, a British Council exhibition which toured internationally from 2003, included early music/video work by Rooney.[25] In 2004 he curated Pass the Time of Day, a UK touring exhibition dealing with the relationship between music and 'the everyday'. Pass the Time of Day included works by Arab Strap, Rodney Graham and Susan Philipsz amongst others.[26][27][16] The following year Rooney's work was selected for the survey show British Art Show 6,[28] which toured the UK in 2005–2006. Rooney had solo shows at venues such as Site Gallery, Sheffield (a two-person show with Susan Philipsz, 2003);[29] and Matt's Gallery, London (2008).[30][31]
He returned to releasing records in 2007 with the red vinyl 12" Lucy Over Lancashire, on SueMi Records of Berlin.[16] Released under his full name of 'Paul Rooney', it was specifically made for broadcast on BBC Radio Lancashire,[32] but BBC Radio 1[33] and BBC 6 Music[34] were amongst the other stations who broadcast the piece.[35][36]
In 2012 Rooney had a solo show in the Liverpool Biennial official programme,[37] and also that year Dust and Other Stories, a collection of short fiction published by Akerman Daly/Aye-Aye Books, was published.[38] The Rooney Peel session was repeated in 2016 on Gideon Coe's BBC 6 Music show,[39] and in 2017 Rooney's first album for seventeen years, Futile Exorcise, was released on Owd Scrat Records on transparent vinyl.[40] The album was on Stewart Lee's list of best records of 2017[41] and a track from it, Lost High Street, reached number 1 on the 2017 Festive Fifty (now compiled by Dandelion Radio).[42] Along with further record releases[43][44] he also began to create sited sound installations in historic locations such as Ripon Courthouse (2019)[45] and Lindisfarne Castle (2022-2023).[46][47]
