Matt Stokes

About Matt Stokes

Matt Stokes creates ‘performance based’ investigations into alternative and informal movements that bind people together. Music subcultures have been central to the development of his recent projects, which have focused on their ability to shape lifestyle, beliefs, and create collectivity.

Proposal for Independent State

For Independent State, Stokes will work with Frome’s thriving hardcore/metal music scene and Somerset blacksmiths and metalworkers. Drawing on Frome’s industrial heritage (in particular that of Singers, a former foundry in the town), Stokes plans to create a semi-permanent monument to the hardcore/punk/metal community of the town and area, which will be paraded through the Carnival procession, flanked and heralded by bands, musicians and fans of the genre, harking back to statues leaving Singers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 

 

Past Works

Club Ponderosa, 2009, projectspace 176, London, UK.

Club Ponderosa takes its name from both the ranch in the famous 1960s TV series Bonanza and a shelter built in a Newcastle neighbourhood by residents of a crescent seeking an independent space to meet and talk. Club Ponderosa functioned as a place for performances and social interaction designed and programmed by residents of the area around 176. Developed in collaboration with self-organised groups and gifted amateurs, the club operated within 176, but with its own series of events and a separate entrance and access times. It also included MASS, a free collective sound system made up of donated elements. 

 

Club Ponderosa, 2009, (installation shot)

Club Ponderosa, 2009, (installation shot)

Club Ponderosa, 2009

The Gainsborough Packet, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK. 4 March –  10 May 2009

16mm film transferred to Hard Drive. 8.56 minutes excluding loop. The Gainsborough Packet is a recent work based on a letter written in 1828 by an ordinary man named John Burdikin who lived in Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead. The letter was the inspiration for the lyrics, music and a Super 16mm film created by Stokes and his collaborators on the project, which trace Brudikin’s life and adventures. 

      The Gainsborough Packet, 2009 (film still)

    The Gainsborough Packet, 2009 (film still)

these are the days, Arthouse Austin, USA. January 24 – April 5, 2009    

these are the days comprises of a 16mm film production and installation, an original audio recording and the collection of ephemera related to the punk, post-punk and DIY movements which has been assembled over a series of trips Stokes made to Austin. The two-channel film installation features footage taken at an Arthouse organized punk show held at the Broken Neck in Austin and a band session recorded at Sweatbox Studio in Austin. The newly created films were concurrently presented at Project Space 176, a major new contemporary art space located in the camden section of London – an area strongly connected to growth of the UK punk scene.                                                        

    Matt Stokes, these are the days, 2009, (installation shot)

Matt Stokes, these are the days, 2008, (film still) 

Matt Stokes, these are the days, 2009, (installation shot detail)

 

Long After Tonight, 2007. Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, USA.  7 September – 26 October, 2007

Long After Tonight documents a re-creation of a Northern Soul night staged at St Salvador’s Church in Dundee, Scotland – parts of which housed some of the city’s first dance events of this kind during the early 1970’s. The eclectic way of dancing that emerged took cues from traditional folk to outrageous moves suggestive of forms of proto-break dancing, featuring spins, flips, and back drops. Stokes invited original participants of this scene to dance to tracks from the genre, but transposed the event to within the nave’s Gothic interior. The mix of real time and slowed down rhythm and movement of the dancers, their flowing hair, endlessly spinning skirts and loose undulating clothing, intermingle with the gilded ornate religious imagery of the church, heightening the connection between the definition of a shared religious experience with an overt feeling of nostalgia. Accompanying the film, several photographs from Long After Tonight were  included in the exhibition.

Matt Stokes, Long After Tonight, 2007 (installation shot)

Matt Stokes, Long After Tonight, 2007 (installation shot detail)

Matt Stokes, Long After Tonight, 2007 (film still)

 

All images courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery, UK