Press Release

SAMSON YOUNG Real Music

Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh 24 July – 5 October 2019 Opening celebration: Thursday 25 July, 6 - 8pm

Talbot Rice Gallery and the University of Edinburgh are proud to present the first solo exhibition in the UK by acclaimed Hong Kong artist and composer, Samson Young (b. 1979). Real Music is presented in conjunction with Edinburgh Art Festival 2019 and will include a catalogue co-published with Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, where the exhibition will travel in 2020.

Real Music is a provocation to unfix notions of authenticity in music, sculpture and society. In developing this exhibition, Young collaborated closely with the Next Generation Sound Synthesis (NESS) research group within the University of Edinburgh, utilising systems that model and predict how virtual instruments would sound in a specific environment. A new series of installations entitled Possible Music, 2018–ongoing, are borne from this encounter, the artist composing music for instruments that do not exist in reality. How would a bugle sound, for instance, if it was activated by the fiery breath of a dragon, superheated to 300 degrees Celsius? Possible Music #2, commissioned for the exhibition, bends the rules of both music and sculpture. Within Young’s 16-channel sound garden, a field of speakers sprout towards the cupolas overhead, while 3D-printed and bronze sculptural forms allude to a colossal, oversized trumpet emerging from the carpeted earth.

As TRG Director Tessa Giblin states: “Samson Young’s collaboration with the NESS group is exemplary of how Talbot Rice Gallery wants to work with artists - we’re trying to discover what this 16th century University can contribute to contemporary art production today that simply wouldn’t otherwise exist. The meeting between Samson Young and Stefan Bilbao was like two crystal balls colliding and splintering off into a third, and the exhibition that emerges for the Edinburgh Art Festival in 2019 will capture that energy.”

Alongside his practice of musical composition and installations, Young has generated a prolific body of work on paper depicting the world of sound. In the upper Georgian Gallery, Young will unveil an entirely new series of drawings entitled Orchestrations that transcribe impossible compositions – colourful and textured graphic scores.

A video performance-lecture by Young entitled The world falls apart into facts derives from the artist’s extensive research into ‘Molihua’ (Jasmine Flower). This well-known Chinese folk song was transcribed for Western audiences in the late eighteenth century, though it is believed to have originated much earlier. Tracing its different versions and their claims to authenticity, this work is a genealogical telling of the song’s story, with the artist adopting an ironic ethnographic gaze and examining the root and effect of ‘echoic mimicry’ through the story of the ‘Molihua’. Accompanying this two-channel video are a number of items that derive from Young’s exploration of the University of Edinburgh’s collections, including a class of musical instruments often described as ‘tourist instruments’ held at St Cecilia’s Hall. Typically created for a foreign market, these instruments manifest a cultural dissonance, being markedly different from the originals they are modelled.

In addition to Young’s new artworks, the exhibition will include Muted Situation #22: Muted Tchaikovsky’s 5th, 2018 (commissioned by Sydney Biennale in 2017) – a 12-channel sound installation - in which an orchestra performs the work on muted instruments. The orchestra’s sound is replaced with the physical exertion of bodies, as musicians energetically perform.

Real Music will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue co-produced with MUMA, Melbourne and published by Koenig Books, London, to be launched at the opening of Edinburgh Arts Festival. The exhibition has been curated by Tessa Giblin, Director of Talbot Rice Gallery, and Charlotte Day, Director of Monash University Museum of Art.

Commissioned by Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh; Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne with support from The Keir Foundation. Supported by Creative Scotland, Edinburgh College of Art, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, Edouard Malingue Gallery and the Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre (vA!), Leisure and Cultural Services Department, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government.

Samson Young Multi-disciplinary artist Samson Young was trained as a composer, and graduated with a Ph.D. in Music Composition from Princeton University in 2013. Young has had solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Centre for Contemporary Chinese Art in Manchester, M+ Pavilion in Hong Kong, and Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, among others. In 2017, he represented Hong Kong in a solo project at the Hong Kong Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale. Group exhibitions include Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Shanghai Biennale; Biennale of Sydney; National Museum of Art, Osaka; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; and documenta 14: documenta radio; amongst others. Furthermore, he has participated in multiple festivals, as well as been the recipient of several prizes, including the 2019 Prix Ars Electronica, 2018 Hong Kong Art Centre Honorary Fellowship and 2015 BMW Art Journey Award. Further awards include Artist of the Year (Hong Kong Arts Development Council), Bloomberg Emerging Artist Award.

About Talbot Rice Gallery Located in the heart of the Old College, Talbot Rice Gallery is the art gallery of the University of Edinburgh. It is dedicated to furthering curatorial research through solo exhibitions with artists who are given access to the University’s collections and research capacity, and also in the creation of conceptual group exhibitions. With two major exhibition spaces to fuel its engine – a 19th century, former natural history museum and a contemporary white cube – Talbot Rice Gallery is committed to the exploration of what the University of Edinburgh can contribute to contemporary art production and creative practice today and into the future.

About Next Generation Sound Synthesis (NESS) Professor Stefan Bilbao, NESS principal investigator: “NESS’s aim was simple: to advance the state of the art in synthetic sound, through advanced simulation methods applied to acoustic systems… We built models for a lot of well-known musical instrument types, such as brass instruments, guitars, bowed strings, timpani, snare drums, as well as new constructions which live only in the virtual realm.”

For additional information, please contact: Melissa MacRobert, Talbot Rice Gallery, [email protected], 44 (0)131 650 2210

Copyright and Courtesy Information:

Samson Young, Possible Music #2, 2019 (detail) Installation view: Real Music, Talbot Rice Gallery, The University of Edinburgh, 2019 © Samson Young Image courtesy Talbot Rice Gallery Photo credit: Sally Jubb

Portrait: Samson Young, 2019 Installation view: Real Music, Talbot Rice Gallery, The University of Edinburgh, 2019 © Samson Young Image courtesy Talbot Rice Gallery Photo credit: Sally Jubb

Samson Young, The world falls apart into facts, 2019 (film still) Two channel video installation, 25 mins © Samson Young Image courtesy of the artist.

Samson Young, Muted Situation #22: Muted Tchaikovsky’s 5th, 2018 Video and 12 channels sound installation, 45 mins © Samson Young Image courtesy of the artist.

Talbot Rice Gallery The University of Edinburgh Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh, EH8 9YL www.trg.ed.ac.uk @talbotrice75 #TalbotRice

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