11–12 November 2016
Great to have the unique American outsider artist, Lonnie Holley back at OTO for a two night residency. Defiantly treading his own path for the past three decades and more, Holley draws on a joyously eclectic pool of influences to craft something captivatingly rare.
“Lonnie Holley sings of love and of babies burning and of children crying and of a modern world gone wrong. He's an African-American artist and musician born in Birmingham, Alabama who creates sculptures that incorporate trash and found objects and whose music shares the improvisatory, magpie sensibility of his visionary environments, with a folk art, real-people vibe that is somewhere between the Saturnian stylings of Sun Ra, the soul/folk sound of Terry Callier and the DIY hiphop of the Screwed Up Click.” – David Keenan, THE WIRE
Lonnie Holley was born on February 10, 1950 in Birmingham, Alabama. From the age of five, Holley worked various jobs: picking up trash at a drive-in movie theatre, washing dishes, and cooking. He lived in a whiskey house, on the state fairgrounds, and in several foster homes. His early life was chaotic and Holley was never afforded the pleasure of a real childhood.
Since 1979, Holley has devoted his life to the practice of improvisational creativity. His art and music, born out of struggle, hardship, but perhaps more importantly, out of furious curiosity and biological necessity, has manifested itself in drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, performance, and sound. Holley’s sculptures are constructed from found materials in the oldest tradition of African American sculpture. Objects, already imbued with cultural and artistic metaphor, are combined into narrative sculptures that commemorate places, people, and events.
Holley did not start making and performing music in a studio nor does his creative process mirror that of the typical musician. His music and lyrics are improvised on the spot and morph and evolve with every event, concert, and recording. In Holley’s original art environment, he would construct and deconstruct his visual works, repurposing their elements for new pieces. This often led to the transfer of individual narratives into the new work creating a cumulative composite image that has depth and purpose beyond its original singular meaning. The layers of sound in Holley’s music, likewise, are the result of decades of evolving experimentation. “Just Before Music” features Holley’s first studio recordings made in 2010 and 2011.
