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Mayo Arts Service

Still Life in Green and Red


Artist: Ian Wilson
Location: NA 
Title: Still Life in Green and Red - LANDMARK Public Art Programme
Medium: music original composition,
Date: April 2012
Materials: limited edition CD 

Composer Ian Wilson’s residency involved him working with and meeting large numbers of the local community. The purpose of the residency is to document how people are dealing with the current economic climate – particularly how people are being positive and pro-active – and then to create a large-scale piece of music which clearly reflects this notion. https://www.landmarkpublicart.com/residency---ian-wilson.html 

Composer Ian Wilson’s residency involved him working with and meeting large numbers of the local community since the commissions began. The purpose of the residency is to document how people are dealing with the current economic climate – particularly how people are being positive and pro-active – and then to create a large-scale piece of music which clearly reflects this notion. 

To that end, songs have been produced from pupil’s poems, and recordings made of the children singing them. Another song was inspired by the way the children themselves first said the lines – identifying and emphasising the changes in pitch and rhythm that the children naturally use when speaking. A choir are preparing a song Wilson wrote specially for them, a setting of a Japanese nature-haiku, in phonetic Japanese. 

‘Still Life in Green and Red’ was performed at Knock Shrine, Mount St. Michael Secondary School in Claremorris and Ballintubber Abbey and a final performance during the Landmark launch events.  All the input from the schools and all the interviews made with people during the residency period form a soundtrack, which is the basis of a 40-minute work for the Contempo Quartet.  

A limited-edition CD has been produced and is available free of charge. Contact the Arts Office to get a copy. 

The Landmark public art programme was launched in April 2012. Percent for Art funds were carefully pooled to create a collection of commissions for a wide range of artists working in a number of art forms.  Key to the thinking behind the programme was a desire to strategically commission works that would complement each other in the same environment, add value to each project and attract artists working at all levels, from emerging to well established.  

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