An exhibition of visual objects related to sound; such as, gobos, painted records, and posters; acting as both merch and archival material. A performance of ambient psych music that blends field recordings, guitar, and vocals, expressing themes of love, death, time and refuge.
Farewell Tour is an ambient psych-rock band by husband and wife artist team Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier, as a cathartic response to the grief arising from Chanelle’s Stage 4 cancer diagnosis and the weight of living with a terminal illness. An attempt to grieve the loss of a future life envisioned.
The music incorporates field recordings, guitars and vocals; drawing on themes of love, death, and loss, and operates under the concept of “…an epic love story of a band where every song is their last. A never ending farewell tour.” This central concept posits the band's entire existence as a continuous, drawn-out goodbye, lending a unique sense of urgency and finality to each performance and recording. Every song is a farewell and every concert a culminating event; yet the tour seeks to go on as long as it can, in a perpetual state of epilogue and reinvention. This meta-narrative invites audiences into the transient present of life, into the soft lines between the band's reality and its fateful mythology.
Farewell Tour engages visually in its own archive and memorabilia as an art project. The visual elements both come from, and contribute to, an archival history; incorporating documentary photos and performance ephemera to create a rich multi-layered band narrative. a "never-ending farewell tour" that invites viewers into this existential crisis. It addresses music as refuge and a way to slow time, using a vintage aesthetic with a "flower power" motif. Gobos serve as a practical and symbolic element, representing barriers and intimate spaces. The opening event is envisioned as an "order of service" blending a rock show, art exhibition, and memorial service.
Key concepts include the interplay of textiles and sounds, the relationship between play and resistance, and the connection between art and life/death. An exhibition about love, grief, and time through the lens of a psych-rock band's final performance.
exhibition preparation at higher ground studio - slideshow
