Touch Me Baby I'm Bodycentric, a Multimodalplosion!

Touch Me Baby I'm Bodycentric, a Multimodalplosion!

Chicks on Speed and Lisa Walker come to City Gallery Wellington

Chicks on Speed and Lisa Walker present TOUCH ME BABY I'M BODYCENTRIC, A MULTIMODALPLOSION!, a new collaborative exhibition set to open 2 March 2013 at City Gallery Wellington.

Music, art, dance, fashion and jewellery come together in this energetic collaboration between Wellington-based jeweler Lisa Walker and international art/performance group Chicks on Speed.

Chicks on Speed were founded by Alex Murray-Leslie (Australia) and Melissa Logan (United States) in Munich in 1997. Since its inception, numerous artists have worked with Chicks on Speed, including New Zealander Lisa Walker. Walker studied with Murray-Leslie and Logan at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts in the 1990s and has collaborated with them on several exhibitions and performances.

TOUCH ME BABY I'M BODYCENTRIC, A MULTIMODALPLOSION!, comes exclusively to City Gallery Wellington and will fill the North Gallery with jewellery, video, banners, satellite dishes, sculpture, a spectacular opening night performance which will be recorded and exhibited throughout the show’s season, and a ‘sonic patchwork’ (which emits sounds in response to touch). This patchwork, part of the Chicks on Speed's archive of self-made Objekt Instruments, is based on the Crackel Box made by STEIM (the studio for electro-instrumental music) in the 1970s. The Chicks reinterpret the Crackel Box by merging analogue and handmade instrument-making with patchwork craft techniques. Visitors to MULTIMODALPLOSION can expect high energy, high heels and a ‘chicksplosion’ of pop and poetic visual languages.

Lisa Walker is an internationally recognised jeweler, whose iconoclastic work is constructed from eclectic materials such as plastic, phones, magazines, hair, finger puppets and flax. She was awarded the coveted European jewellery award, the Françoise van den Bosch Award, in 2010. At the awards ceremony, Lisa Walker collaborated with Chicks on Speed to stage a performance using pieces of clothing-like jewellery which made sounds in response to the performers’ own body heat.

Chicks on Speed have a similar handmade, expansive approach to making and performing and are self-described as ‘multidisciplinary workers in the field of culture’. Part music, art, fashion, literature, dance, education and performance, their work slips between these categories and messes up the boundaries between ‘high art’ and ‘low art’.

The output of Chicks on Speed has been prolific. They have staged performances, exhibitions and workshops in galleries across the world, including MoMA, Tate, Centre Georges Pompidou and a major solo exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Art Centre in 2010. After shaking up City Gallery with MULTIMODALPLOSION, Chicks on Speed are heading to Australia to an artist’s residency and exhibition at Artspace in Sydney.

Chicks on Speed will also play two public gigs in New Zealand, at Cassette Nine in Auckland, February 28 and at Puppies in Wellington, March 1.

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