Rob Kennedy

Glasgow based artist Rob Kennedy’s project was supported by the National Lottery through the Scottish Arts Council’s Artist Film and Video Awards 2006/07.

Kennedy is currently involved in the production of three video works born out of a series of collaborative projects working with different musical composers: Peter Dowling, Giles Lamb, Martin Parker and Sue Tompkins. The emphasis in each of the three works is the desire to integrate ideas and methods of improvisation into the video and sound production process.

This evolving collaboration and dialogue continually shapes, distorts and then reshapes the direction of the work. Steering away from a reliance on a single directive, this project draws on the experience of each of the individual composers who have a background in improvised music ranging from free jazz through to electro-acoustic and vocal performance.

The production of the work has incorporated live performance, studio working and ongoing debate in order to construct a ‘palette’ of sequences, structures and rules that can then be (re) organised into new forms.

Each work has at its starting point a need to form some kind of dialogue with the norms and conventions of television production in order to understand, adapt and re-define these codes into a grammar that can subsequently be used to suggest other readings, other outcomes, other problems, than those previously prescribed.

This is not about taking a didactic stance that morally opposes the power of these sounds and images, in a vain effort to destroy or undermine them, but trying to understand the complexity of the structures involved in these productions (formally, emotionally, psychologically) and using this language, this power, this sense of value, to look closer at the dichotomies that are presented within these relationships.

Rob Kennedy was born in London in 1968. He now lives and works in Glasgow. Kennedy’s work shifts between sculpture, video and live video manipulation. Rob studied BA (hons) Fine Art at Brighton Polytechnic from 1987-1990.

Upcoming exhibitions: Video Installation, Threshold Space, Perth, UK curated by Iliyana Nedkova December 2007 Recent exhibitions include: ‘Live in Montreal’ installation & video, Studio Cormier, Montreal 2007 ‘Sapphire Season’ Waygood Gallery, Newcastle, UK 2007 ‘Something is wrong here…’ Solo show, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, UK 2007