E C H O E S

I A N E M E S IAN EMES

E C H O E S

20 APRIL - 3 JUNE 2018 IAN EMES

Ian Emes began his career as a painter, sculptor and then, animator. He has recently staged his seventh exhibition On The Run, which detailed his legacy as well as explored new concepts using floating screens, lm, CGI and sound design. His animations have also featured in major exhibitions, such as : Their Mortal Remains at the V&A and Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma. In addition to Pink Floyd concerts, his works have been used in numerous live music tours such as ’sTubular Bells Tour, ’s Live at Pompeii, and ’s - Berlin and Us + Them World Tour. FILM HIGHLIGHTS TOURS

2016 Nothing Part 14, Pink Floyd 2017 Roger Waters Us + Them, 2013 The War of the Worlds, Jeff Wayne, Anne-Marie North America Tour Wayne, Liam Neeson 2016 David Gilmour European Tour 2001 Rats 1978 Mike Oldfield Tubular Bells Tour 2000 The Invisible Man, Universal Studios 1976 Pink Floyd, Knebworth 1997 Deadly Summer, Linda James 1975 Pink Floyd, World Tour, The 1996 The Munsters, Universal Studios Hollywood Bowl 1992 In-House Director, Associates 1974 Pink Floyd, Empire Pool, Wembley 1991 The Wall: Live in Berlin, Roger Waters 1989 How to be Cool, Granada, Phillip Pullman AWARDS 1987 The Yob, The Comic Strip, C4 1986 Knights and Emeralds, , Warner Bros 2017 Emmy Nomination, USA 1985 The Box of Delights, BBC 2014 British Animation Award 1983 Goodie Two Shoes, Jeff Katzenberg, 2011 BAFTA Award 2009 BAFTA Award 1982 The Chauffeur, 2002 BAFTA Award Nomination 1979 The Beard 1989 RTS Directing Award 1978 The Oriental Nightfish, Paul and Linda McCartney 1989 RTS Design Award 1976 Hearts Right, Roger Daltrey 1984 BAFTA Award 1975 Tubular Bells, Mike Oldfield 1984 Oscar Nomination 1974 The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd 1979 Palme d’Or Award 1973 One of These Days, Pink Floyd 1979 Award de Qualité

EXHIBITIONS 2017 Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains, V&A, London 2016 On the Run, City Gallery, Wroclaw 2015 Ikons’ Icons, Ikon Gallery, 2014 This Time Tomorrow, Ray Davies, Konk Gallery, London 2013 Time, BIAD, Birmingham 2012 One of These Days, Unit 24 Southbank, London 2010 It Was a Thursday Night, The Horse Hospital, London 1980 National Film Theatre Retrospective, London One of These Days / French Windows (1973) Echoes (2018), Acrylic on canvas

ECHOES

ECHOES is a retrospective exhibition of Ian Emes – the Pink Floyd animator – that explores a body of work spanning over four decades including hand-drawn animation artwork produced in the 70s and 80s, personal drawings and paintings from then until now, and a multi- screen contemporary installation. The exhibition begins in 1972, the year when Emes’s experimental filmFrench Windows - a vision of his own kaleidoscopic universe in fantastic motion where bodies twirl, dance and drift through vortices of geometric shapes and abstract forms – brought him to the attention of Pink Floyd, who commissioned him to create the visuals for what would become one of the greatest albums of all time: The Dark Side of the Moon.

The coming decades would bring further collaborations with some of the music scene’s biggest names such as Mike Oldfield (Tubular Bells, 1973), Linda and Paul McCartney (Oriental Nightfish, 1978), and Duran Duran (The Chauffeur, 1984). I’VE BEEN MAD FOR FUCKING YEARS (2016) Acrylic on canvas BOOM! (2018), Perspex disc By restoring, archiving, revisiting and re-inventing the works of a by- gone era using new, frenetic language and new technologies, Ian Emes strives to get back in touch with the power of simplicity, to be brave enough to tumble in slow motion, to freeze and remain still, regardless of impatient young eyes ever-craving for new images.

GRANTCHESTER MEADOWS (2018), Installation Film

GRANTCHESTER MEADOWS (2018), Installation Film

ECHOES is an immersion into Emes’s life-long fascination with the fluid relationship between music and the moving image, controlled synchronization and fortuitous coincidence, his stream-of- consciousness approach to imagining and the meticulous process that follows. The body of work presented in ECHOES provides us with an opportunity to re-live the anarchic spirit enabled by an affluent British society in the 70s, when a free-to-all education enabled the youth to defy the very institutions that paid for it alongside any pre- conceived concept or idea.

STUDY FOR INTERSTELLAR OVERDRIVE (2018), Acrylic, inks, glass STUDY FOR SET THE CONTROLS FOR THE HEART OF THE SUN (2018), Acrylic and wax on paper on wax and Acrylic (2018), SUN THE OF HEART THE FOR CONTROLS THE SET FOR STUDY ECHOES is a unique opportunity for the audience to experience the full breadth of Emes’s artistic output, an invitation into the macrocosm of Emes, where figures in the space, perpetual motion and geometric environments intertwine freely and the unexpected is celebrated.

STUDY FOR THE NARROW WAY PART 1 (2018), Acrylic and wax on paper STUDY FOR THE NARROW WAY PART 1 (2018), Acrylic and wax on paper paper on wax and Acrylic (2018), 1 PART WAY NARROW THE FOR STUDY Melting Clocks (2017), Time sequence remastered (1979) Ian Emes: A retrospective to reflect now A.M.: There’s something about the experience of live music that can take you out of yourself. The Upcoming, 2012 How do you think that music and moving images relate in this way? Do they create a relationship INTERVIEW the feeds off each other?

Abigail Moss: In terms of practicing the craft and experimentation in your art work, is this I.E.: I have to talk personally, because music was a big part of my life growing up and Pink Floyd, something that you would encourage in new, upcoming artists? Do you feel that there’s any such in particular, were an enormous influence. One of the reasons that they were so inspirational thing as good, or more worthwhile, experimentation? for me is that they have an architectural background. They went to architecture college and so I think their music creates spaces. It creates environments of sound and I was so stimulated that Ian Emes: I don’t think there’s any such thing as a bad experiment. Because the whole point about my mind would soar, and so I would see images that were stimulated by the music. As for the an experiment is that it’s not guaranteed to succeed. And, as we say, the price of experimentation live experience, that was the most thrilling when Floyd started to use imagery in their concerts. is failure. For me, there’s not enough emphasis on the benefits of failure. Through the process The trick is not to force it on people, but rather to allow the music to stimulate their imagination of trial and error, you make many mistakes; and through learning from those mistakes, you’ll and the visuals continuing this without over-defining. This makes it even more exciting and eventually have a success. I think there’s pretend experiment, or packaging a concept, which for exhilarating because there’s part of you contributing to the process. me is the most appalling thing you could ever do to make a brand name attach to an experiment. A.M.: Could you perhaps say it’s encouraging an experience, rather than pushing a specific A.M.: Do you think that art and music can help a culture to define itself? meaning or feeling?

I.E.: Without being old fashioned, I think art has a duty to be a mirror on society and to reflect I.E.: Yes. And it’s also a group experience, a mass experience amongst your generation. It’s a on it, without thinking about being successful. I think there’s a big emphasis on being famous. generational experience. So you have ownership in it and it’s enormous, it’s as big as where your I don’t think an artist necessarily has to be the starving garret artist, but back in the Surrealist imagination can take you. period, or the Cubist period, they weren’t setting out to be successful: they were tackling an idea. So my worry is that people are too busy becoming a success, and not spending enough A.M.: Finally, thinking about this idea of forming our own individuality, one that isn’t overly time coming to terms with the thought processes in their work. influenced by media and societal factors, does this exhibition offer your own subjective opinion on how that should be done, or just confront us with the issue? A.M.: Do you think it’s more difficult for people to create this individual sense of themselves now, than it was when you started your career? I.E.: Yes, it does. I don’t want to be preachy, obviously, but I’m playing with the idea of identity and with the notion that the corporations take the identity of youth and try to sell it back to them. I.E.: I think there’s more opportunity, but I also think there’s more self-consciousness about For me, the worst thing is when a perfume manufacturer says “Be who you are, whatever”. Now, identity. I don’t want to make sweeping statements, but I feel that the younger generation the thing about that is you can “be who you are” provided you buy my perfume. It’s an absolute are being bombarded, all the time, with what they should be like. How they should be and abuse of freedom of thinking – to take the very concept of freedom of thinking, and attach a the brand associations with that. Whereas, in the 60s, rock music was inventing itself and was brand to it. And this is hitting on young people from every direction; it’s like rain, like static, it’s going on regardless of the marketing. During the time of the concept album, there were some information overload. I would like to encourage young artists to listen to themselves, not care big philosophical ideas going around, from Dark Side of the Moon to The Lamb Lies Down on what anyone thinks and just go by their gut feeling. Not copycat, but just be stimulated and Broadway, by Genesis. The concept albums had ideas in them, and now … I don’t think a big excited by something, and do what feels true to them. That’s what I want from the exhibition. music label would really want a concept album. It would be too challenging, or too unlikely to sell. Because of the money, people control everything now; no one wants to take a risk. The Dark Side of the Moon, Time (1974) THE CHAUFFEUR

Within Ian Emes’s body of work The Chauffeur is a one- off, unlike anything else he has created. And yet it is one of the films he is most proud of, a film that is close to him and as true to him as his more private works. It came at a transitional moment in his career when he had reached the limits of his exploration of animation and he was embarking on a new journey into the world of live-action. He was both naïve and in control of his medium. Ian had devised his own self-taught methods using storyboards, which had grown out of drawing and animation.

All images: The Chauffeur (1982), Video PINK FLOYD

Olaf Stapledon’s classic science-fiction novel Starmaker (1938) tells the tale of an Englishman who, while walking one evening, drifts up and out from the dewy base of a grassy knoll into the furthest reaches of space. Decades later, in 1971, a young studio bound Ian Emes began to create his own universe using the traditional technique of cell animation. Where Stapledon’s solitary figure would drift through starry constellations, the bodies that would figure in Emes’s work twirled, danced, and drifted through vortices of geometric shapes and abstract forms. French Windows (1972), Emes’s animation set to the music of Pink Floyd, presented a comprehensive vision of his own kaleidoscopic universe in fantastic motion. Examples of what would develop into some of Emes’s signature themes – the figure in space, perpetual motion, and geometric environments – were all present in the work. But, there was more to French Windows than a confident opening salvo of artistic intent. A third interstellar flight should be added to the above: it begins with the young Emes, hunched over storyboards, perhaps spot-lit by an anglepoise lamp. With each application of colour to each cell of French Windows, the body of Emes, unnoticed by the artist, drifted further and further out from his modest amateur studio into the starry, accolade filled, firmaments of the professional artist and filmmaker. One of These Days / French Windows (1973)

The Work of Ian Emes by Morgan Quaintance “Ian Emes is the first artist to create synchronised moving images for Pink Floyd’s live performances. He laid the foundation for their future visuals and remains influential to this day”.

Lucia Heverova – Curator

One of These Days / French Windows (1973)

One of These Days / French Windows (1973)

“The circular screen marks the point when Pink Floyd moved from improvised light shows to preconceived moving images. The band wanted me to take things further, they saw the visual possibilities of having something which was structured, spatial and more connected to their music”.

Ian Emes, 2017 Ian to provide title

On the run (2012), Digital print “I run and I run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking… And still I carry on, caught in perpetual motion, an ageing child in the playpen. But as long as I am curious, I am alive”.

Ian Emes, 2018

20 Cross Street, N1 2BG, London, UK

Front cover: Detail of INTERSTELLAR OVERDRIVE (2018), Acrylic and ink on perspex +44 (0)20 72269083 Back cover: Detail of SET THE CONTROLS FOR THE HEART OF THE SUN (2018), Acrylic and ink on perspex no20arts.com